GIFT   OF 


ACROSS  THE 

SAN  JUAN  MOUNTAINS. 


BY 


T.  A.  RICKARD, 


Editor  of  The  Engineering  and  Mining  Journal;  Associate  of 
the  Royal  School  of  Mines;  Member  of  the  American 
Institute   of  Mining  Engineers;   Member  of 
the  Institution  of  Mining  and  Metal- 
lurgy,  and  State   Geologist   of 
Colorado   1895-1901. 


FIRST  EDITION.    FIRST  THOUSAND. 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON. 

THE  ENGINEERING  AND  MINING  JOURNAL. 
1903. 


COPYRIGHT,    1903. 

BY 

THE    ENGINEERING   AND    MINING   JOURNAL. 


THIS    LITTLE    BOOK 
IS 

DEDICATED 

BY 

THE  AUTHOR 

TO 

THE    THREE    COMPANIONS, 

H.  N.  TOD, 

LIONEL  LINDSAY, 

C.  H.  WITTENOOM, 

WHO  SHARED  THE  INCIDENTS 

AND   EXPERIENCES    HEREIN   RELATED. 


525.")  til 


ACROSS  THE 

SAN  JUAN  MOUNTAINS, 


On  a  superb  morning  in  September,  that  month  of 
many  colors,  four  of  us1  started  on  a  ride  among  the  min- 
ing districts  of  the  San  Juan,  in  southwestern  Colorado. 
The  starting  point  was  Ouray,  the  picturesque  little  town 
named  after  the  old  chief,  an  Indian  of  renown,  the  friend 
of  the  white  men  who  first  explored  the  mountain  fast- 
nesses of  the  Uncompahgre.  From  Ouray  we  rode  across 
the  ranges  to  Telluride,  Silverton,  Lake  City,  Gunnison, 
and  thence  to  Crested  Butte  and  back,  following  a  course 
which,  on  the  map,  looks  like  a  figure  8,  with  Ouray  at 
the  base  of  the  lower  loop  and  Crested  Butte  at  the  top. 
See  map.  The  distance  was  slightly  over  400  miles;  the 
country  traversed  is  beautiful  to  the  traveler  and  interest- 
ing to  the  mining  engineer,  so  that  the  experience  was 
sufficiently  rich  in  incidents  and  information  to  warrant 
the  account  which  it  is  my  purpose  to  present. 

We  left  Ouray  early  on  the  5th  of  September,  with 
the  intention  of  visiting  two  mines  in  the  vicinity — the 
American  Nettie  and  the  Bachelor.  A  mile  below  the 
town  the  trail  ascends  the  precipitous  sides  of  Gold  Hill, 
and  as  our  sure-footed  mountain  horses  followed  the  zig- 
zag through  the  pines  we  found  that  each  turn  of  the  trail 
brought  a  steadily  expanding  vista  until,  halting  on  a 
projecting  rock,  we  could  see  far  out  toward  the  north 
to  the  table-lands  behind  Montrose,  across  the  near  valley 
to  the  terraced  dip-slopes  of  Triassic  sandstone,  down  upon 

1  The  party  consisted  of  Messrs.   H.   N.   Tod,   Lionel   Lindsay, 
C.  H.  Wittenoom  and  the  writer. 


*^    l    107 
GleijwoodSprs.RedClifi: 

OLki-    I 

"!°iAND* 


SCALE:  40  MILES  =  1  INCH. 
Route    followed. 

MAP    OF    SOUTHWESTERN    COLORADO. 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  7 

Ouray  itself,  cradled  amid  red  rocks  and  golden  aspens, 
and  up  beyond  the  town  to  the  sentinel  peak  of  Mt.  Abram, 
which  guards  the  sources  of  the  swiftly  flowing  Uncom- 
pahgre. 

On  arrival  at  the  American  Nettie  mine  the  superin- 
tendent, Mr.  Kunz,  permitted  us  to  visit  the  underground 
workings.  These  have  an  aggregate  length  of  12  miles, 
and  consist  of  a  series  of  adits  and  drifts  penetrating  the 
top  layers  of  the  Dakota  sandstone  where  it  comes  in  con- 
tact with  the  overlying  black  shales  of  the  Colorado  series. 
Both  formations  are  members  of  the  Cretaceous,  the  Da- 
kota being  the  basal  member  of  that  division.  The  ore 
is  found  in  irregular  masses  occupying  chambers  in  the 


MlHE 

sandstone  and  impregnating  the  rock  along  stringers  or 
small  veins  which  serve  as  a  guide  in  prospecting.  In 
the  cavities  the  ore  consists  chiefly  of  a  sintery  mass  of 
oxidized  material  interspersed  with  ocherous  ironstone, 
but  when  the  ore  is  found  impregnating  the  body  of  the 
sandstone  it  appears  in  the  form  of  sulphides — iron  and 
copper  pyrites,  blende,  galena  and  gray  copper.  The  best 
ore  seems  to  hug  the  contact  with  the  overlying  shales,  in 
the  manner  illustrated  in  Fig.  1,  where  A  and  B  are 
"pockets"  of  ore  reaching  downward  from  the  shale-sand- 
stone parting  and  connected  by  a  seam  X  Y,  which  fol- 
lows the  line  of  division  between  the  two  rock  formations. 
The  pockets  are  full  of  crumbly  oxidized  ore  intermixed 
with  a  little  gypsum,  while  X  Y  also  carries  some  gypsum 
and  a  thin  layer  of  black  crumbly  lime-shale  which 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  9 

suggests  that  it  originated  from  the  dissolution  of  an 
impure  gypsum.  The  country  lies  flat,  with  a  slight  dip 
to  the  northeast,  and  it  is  crossed  by  almost  vertical  dikes 
which  have  evidently  been  the  immediate  cause  of  such 
fracturing  of  the  sandstone  as  was  favorable  to  subsequent 
ore  deposition.'  In  prospecting,  it  is  found  best  to  follow 
stringers  of  pyrite  or  even  mere  "walls"  (slight  fractures 
devoid  of  ore)  which*  are  parallel  to  the  course  of  the  dikes. 

These  dikes  are  peculiar;  they  are  not  made  up  of  vol- 
canic rock;  on  the  contrary,  they  consist  of  clastic2  ma- 
terial, that  is,  fragments  of  sedimentary  rock,  and  in  this 
case  the  fragments  were  recognizable  as  pieces  of  sandstone, 
probably  derived  from  beds  not  far  away.  The  dikes  which 
we  saw  were  2  to  4  ft.  in  width,  and  were  well  defined  by 
their  distinct  walls ;  the  country  near  them  was  fractured 
and  sheeted,  a  condition  which  is  probably  due  to  the  dis- 
turbance brought  about  by  the  intrusions  of  volcanic  rock, 
which  are  known  to  occur  in  certain  parts  of  Gold  Hill. 
Not  that  the  clastic  dikes  are  of  direct  volcanic  origin — 
quite  the  contrary — they  are  built  up  entirely  of  sedi- 
mentary rock  material  which  has  been  packed  'together  and 
cemented  by  the  water  that  has  found  its  way  into  them ; 
they  occupy  fractures  which  may  have  been,  and  probably 
were,  the  indirect  result  of  an  intrusion,  through  the  neigh- 
boring formation,  of  true  eruptive  matter,  such  as  has 
been  referred  to  as  actually  occurring  near-by.  On  the 
high  ridge  above  the  American  Nettie  mine  there  is  a 
coarsely  porphyritic  diorite  which  suggests  an  agency  capa- 
ble of  having  brought  about  the  fracturing  which  led,  first, 
to  the  formation  of  the  clastic  dikes  and,  subsequently,  to 
the  circulation  of  the  ore-depositing  waters. 

The  American  Nettie  has  a  new  tramway,  whose  catenary 
curve  sweeps  from  the  high  cliffs  of  Gold  Hill,  and,  with 
undeviating  line,  bridges  the  abyss  of  the  valley.  It  is  a 
picturesque  bit  of  engineering.  A  descent  of  1,820  ft.  is 
made  in  4,200  ft.  The  span  which  crosses  the  valley  is 

2  From  the  Greek,  Jclastos,  broken.     It  is  employed  to  describe 
rocks  made  up  of  fragments,  as  distinguished  from  the  crystalline. 


10 


ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 


2,100  ft.  in  length,  and  in  that  distance  the  drop  is  915  ft. 
The  Leschen  Company  built  it  and,  owing  to  the  very 
abrupt  contour  of  the  ground,  they  had  to  make  especial 


TRAMWAY  TERMINAL. 


provision  for  safety.  The  descending  side  has  a  cable  1J- 
inch  diameter,  while  the  cable  upon  which  the  empties  re- 
turn is  1  inch  in  diameter.  The  traction  rope  is  f  inch.  To 
the  latter  button-shaped  clips  are  permanently  attached, 


12  ACROSS   THE    SAX   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

with  intervening  spaces,  the  length  of  which  is  regulated 
by  the  number  of  buckets  in  use.  The  buckets  are  automati- 
cally detached  and  attached  to  the  rope,  at  the  loading  and 
terminal  stations ;  at  both  terminals  the  buckets  receive  a 
retarding  and  accelerating  movement,,  as  they  arrive  and 
depart,  respectively,  in  order  to  diminish  the  vibration  at- 
tendant on  the  removal  of  the  load  from  the  line,  and  the 
return  of  it  into  service;  The  accompanying  photograph 
illustrates  one  of  the  terminals. 

On  leaving  the  Nettie  we  followed  the  trail  which  took 
us  around  the  northern  ramparts  of  Gold  Hill,  downward 
into  the  valley,  whence  a  road  led  to  the  Bachelor  mine  in 
Red  Canon.  Two  members  of  the  party,  who  were  unused 
to  the  mountain  horse,  marveled  at  his  sure-footedness  as 
we  scrambled  down  talus  slopes  and  threaded  our  way 
among  loose  blocks  of  fallen  rock.  It  is  my  experience  that 
a  good  "trail  horse"  will  go  almost  anywhere  that  a  man 
can  go  without  using  his  hands,  while  the  patient  burro 
(donkey)  will  walk  safely  over  ledges  which  bring  a  tremor 
to  the  hearts  of  those  who  are  not  mountaineers.  All  the 
exploratory  work  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  regions  was  done 
by  "packing/9  that  is,  by  the  transport  of  supplies  and  ma- 
chinery on  the  backs  of  animals.  Both  mules  and  donkeys 
are  used  in  this  service.  When  the  former  are  employed 
they  are  strung  out  in  a  line  and  connected  by  rope.  A 
man  rides  the  leading  mule  and  guides  the  whole  cavalcade. 
Another  man  usually  walks  or  rides  in  the  rear.  When 
burros  (the  word  donkey  being  rarely  heard  in  the  mining 
regions)  are  engaged  in  packing  they  are  not  tied  together, 
but  each  goes  loose,  and  the  owner  drives  them  like  a  flock 
of  sheep,  differing  only  from  the  latter  in  that  they  have 
learned,  from  the  narrowness  of  the  trails,  to  walk  in  single 
file  when  that  is  required  for  safety.  A  mule  will  carry 
250  pounds  up  grade  and  350  pounds  down,  while  a  burro 
can  manage  to  carry  an  average  of  200  pounds.  The  mule 
requires  to  be  fed,  but  the  burro  can  eke  out  a  precarious 
existence  on  the  scant  grass  of  the  mountain  slopes,  and  for 
this  reason  he  has  been  most  serviceable  to  the  pioneer  and 


ACROSS   THE   SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  13 

the  prospector;  if  the  camel  be  named  "the  ship  of  the 
desert,"  then  the  patient  long-eared  friend  of  the  miner 
might  well  be  christened  "the  porter  of  the  hills." 

When  we  reached  the  Bachelor  mine  the  noon-day  meal 
was  ready,  so  we  accepted  the  invitation  of  Mr.  George 
Hurlbut,  the  principal  owner  of  the  mine,  to  take  luncheon 
before  going  underground.  It  will  not  be  out  of  place 
to  refer  to  the  food  which  miners  get  in  localities  like 
these;  it  is  surprisingly  good,  as  a  rule,  even  at  proper- 
ties which  are  a  couple  of  miles  above  sea  level  and  a  cor- 
responding distance  from  the  main  distributing  points  for 
provisions.  The  companies  usually  charge  one  dollar  per 
day  for  board  and  lodging,  where  standard  wages  are 
$3  per  shift.  The  fare  which  the  miner  gets  three  times 
a  day  is  superior  to  that  of  the  second-class  hotel  of  the 
neighboring  mining  towns  and  far  better  than  that  which 
is  the  daily  portion  of  workmen  in  other  countries.  There 
is  always  one  weak  spot — the  coffee;  partly  because  it  is 
not  prepared  immediately  before  being  served  and  partly 
because  it  is  made  from  adulterated  mixtures,  and  largely 
because  the  average  mine  cook  does  not  know  the  taste  of 
real  coffee — at  all  events,  it  is  a  concoction  out  of  keeping 
with  the  excellence  of  the  remainder  of  the  miner's  fare 
and  much  better  adapted  for  staining  floors  or  removing 
boiler  scale. 

The  Bachelor  lode  is  closely  associated  with  a  clastic 
dike  of  peculiar  character;  the  same  lode  follows  the  dike 
through  the  mines  to  the  east,  the  Khedive,  and  to  the 
west,  the  Wedge.  Light-colored  sandstones  and  shales,  be- 
longing to  the  upper  subdivision  of  the  Triassic,  constitute 
the  prevailing  formation;  their  dip  is  slightly  southeast- 
ward and  they  are  crossed  almost  at  right  angles  by  a  dike, 
which  inclines  a  little  to  the  north  and  follows  a  fault- 
fissure  of  small  displacement.  In  the  Khedive  the  sedi- 
mentaries  form  a  low  monoclinal  fold  broken  by  the  dike- 
fissure,  with  an  amount  of  dislocation  so  slight  as  to  be 
difficult  of  measurement.  The  zinc-lead-silver  lode  of  the 
mine  traverses  both  dike  and  country.  When  small  it 


14 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 


usually  follows  one  or  other  of  the  walls  of  the  dike,  and 
when  enlarged  it  spreads  out  into  both  dike  and  country. 
The  lode  has  a  northing  of  45  ft.  in  480  ft.,  but  this  is 
due  not  so  much  to  deviation  from  the  perpendicular  as  it 
is  the  result  of  frequent  offsets  caused  by  slips  along  the 


FRAGMENT    OF    CLASTIC    DIKE. 
Natural   Size. 

bedding-planes  of  the  country.  These  do  not  fault  the  ore, 
because  they  antedate  it,  but  they  cause  the  vein  to  diverge 
to  one  side  in  accordance  with  the  course  of  the  fracture 
along  which  the  dike  first,  and  the  lode-forming  solutions 
afterward,  found  a  passage.  The  ore  frequently  spreads 


ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  15 

out  between  the  bedding-planes  of  the  sandstone  and  shales ; 
it  is  also  found  in  seams  following  fractures  in  the  outer 
country,  which  appear  to  be  sympathetic  to  the  main 
fissure  occupied  by  the  dike  and  the  lode  proper.  The  dike 
is  usually  about  2  ft.  in  width. 

The  dike,  to  be  seen  in  the  Bachelor  workings,  is  called 
by  the  miners,  of  course,  "porphyry/'  but  it  consists  of 
fragments  of  quartz,  from  sub-angular  pieces  as  large  as 
a  thumb-nail  to  grains  of  sand,  and  of  flat  pieces  of  black 
shale;  the  latter  are  very  prominent,  and  give  the  dike- 
rock  a  distinctly  mottled  appearance,  as  the  accompanying 
photograph3  shows.  They  vary  in  size  from  microscopic 
fragments  to  bits  several  inches  long.  Besides  these  the 
dike  contains  pieces  of  sandstone,  often  micaceous  by  reason 
of  sericite.  A  characteristic  of  the  dike-rock  is  the  ar- 
rangement of  the  shale  fragments  with  their  longer  axes 
parallel  to  the  walls  of  the  dike;  this  is  more  marked  in 
some  parts  of  the  mine  than  in  others,  and  it  is  usually 
most  pronounced  close  to  the  walls.  (See  Figs.  2  and  3.) 
The  latter  form  a  distinct  parting  from  the  outer  country, 
and  sometimes  are  also  accompanied  by  a  selvage. 

This,  like  the  one  we  saw  at  the  American  Nettie  mine, 
is  a  clastic  dike  and  the  origin  of  it  affords  good  material 
for  speculation.  Mr.  F.  L.  Eansome,  of  the  United  States 
Geological  Survey,  has  contributed  an  interesting  paper4 
on  the  origin  of  this  very  dike,  and  he  explains  it  thus : 

"A  fissure  was  formed,  accompanied  by  some  faulting, 
and  was  filled,  chiefly  from  above,  by  fragments  of  the  soft 
fissile  black  shale,  which  does  not  occur  in  the  stratigraph- 
ically  lower  beds  exposed  in  the  immediate  vicinity,  and 
partly  by  material  from  the  lower  light-colored  beds  form- 
ing the  present  walls."5 


3  This  photograph  is  taken  from  the  Transactions  American 
Institute  Mining  Engineers,  Vol.  XXX.,  p.  231. 

'"A  Peculiar  Clastic  Dike  near  Ouray,  Colorado,  and  its  Asso- 
ciated Deposit  of  Silver  Ore,"  by  F.  L.  Ransome.  Transactions 
American  Institute  Mining  Engineers,  Vol.  XXX.,  pp.  227-236. 

5  Op.  cit.,  p.  230. 


16 


ACROSS   THE  SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 


That  this  pseudo-dike  is  built  up  of  fragmentary  sed- 
imentary rock,  that  it  occupies  a  fissure,  and  that  it  con- 
tains no  lava  or  other  volcanic  matter  as  a  cementing 
material — these  data  seem  to  be  assured.  The  nice  point 
about  the  problem  is  the  mode  of  formation.  Was  it  from 


£ 'AC HE. i. OR 


FIG. 


above  or  below  ?  Mr.  Ransome  accepts  the  first  alternative, 
and  in  support  of  this  view  he  is  enabled  to  instance  the 
sandstone  dikes  which  Whitman  Cross  found  in  the  granite 
near  Divide,  in  Colorado;  which,  elsewhere, Darwin, Ussing, 
Irving  and  others  have  described,  and  ascribed  to  a  filling 
from  above.  Hugh  Miller  found  a  pseudo-dike  in  Cro- 
marty  (Scotland)  in  which  a  mass  of  sandstone  working 
in  from  above  (probably)  contained  fossils.  Diller  wrote 


ACROSS   TIIL   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  17 

a  memoir6  on  the  sandstone  dikes  of  California  and  con- 
cluded that  they  were  injected  from  below. 

In  the  Lipari  Islands  there  occur  masses  of  volcanic 
tuff,  hard  enough  to  be  fractured,  which  exhibit  cracks 
filled  in  with  fallen  dust  and  scoria.7  But  this  is  an 
entirely  different  kind  of  occurrence,  as  also  is  that  observed 


KHEDIVE  MINE. 


at  Pontgibaud  (France),  where  a  silver-lead  vein  occur- 
ring in  granulite  is  shattered,  together  with  its  encasing 
rock,  and,  for  a  length  of  10  meters,  at  a  depth  of  50 
meters,  contains  boulders  of  scoriaceous  lava  evidently  de- 
rived from  the  alluvium  which  once  covered  the  outcrop 

9  Bulletin  Geological  Society  of  America,  Vol.  I.,  pp.  411-442. 
7  My  authority  is  my  friend  Professor  Judd,  author  of  "Vol- 
canoes" and  Dean  of  the  Royal  School  of  Mines,  London. 


18  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

of  the  vein.8  It  is  obvious  that  occurrences  of  this  kind, 
at  surface  or  near  it,  are  quite  different  in  their  origin  from 
a  clean-cut  fracture  many  hundred  feet  underground,  of 
great  length  and  depth  and  persistent  width.  It  is,  how- 
ever, worth  while  to  emphasize  the  distinction. 

As  between  filling  from  above  by  gravitation  and  filling 
from  below  through  pressure,  I  am  decidedly  inclined  to 
choose  the  latter.  In  the  first  place,  no  mining  engineer 
familiar  with  the  shifting  of  wall-rock  would  grant  the 
idea  of  the  maintenance  underground  of  an  open  fissure, 
both  large  and  crooked,  in  rocks  so  soft  as  these  shales 
and  sandstones,  for  a  period  long  enough  to  permit  of 
the  complete  filling  up  of  the  suppositions  crevasse.  The 
sandstones  and  their  alternations  of  shale  exhibit  move- 
ment along  the  sloping  bedding-planes,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, and  in  the  mine  care  has  to  be  exercised  to  pre- 
vent injury  from  the  rock  which  breaks  off  along  these 
partings.  Next,  the  internal  evidence  of  structure  appears 
to  be  against  such  a  view.  Fig.  3  illustrates  a  noteworthy 
characteristic  of  the  Bachelor  dike,  namely,  the  frequent 
tendency  to  bulges  and  to  vein-like  protrusions  which  ex- 
tend from  the  body  of  the  dike  upward  into  the  surround- 
ing country ;  no  downward  filling  would,  so  it  seems  to  me, 
explain  this  condition  of  affairs. 

The  fragments  of  black  shale  are  traced  by  Mr.  Ean- 
some  to  an  overlying  bed  through  which  the  dike  does 
not  penetrate.  Because  it  does  not  pass  through  this  shale 
bed  it  is  inferred  that  the  latter  was  the  source  of  much 
of  the  shale  scattered  through  the  dike.  But  why  should 
not  a  simpler  explanation  suffice?  Namely,  that  the  fis- 
sure occupied  by  the  dike  broke  through  the  harder  sand- 
stone series  and  died  out  when  it  met  the  tenaceous,  shift- 
ing and  more  flexible  layers  of  shale,  much  in  the  manner 
observed  in  the  Enterprise  mine.  (See  Fig.  4.9)  Finally, 

8  Engineering  and  Mining  Journal,  p.  151,  August  18,  1894. 
"The  Lodes  of  Pontgibaud,"  by  T.  A.  Rickard. 

8  Taken  from  Transactions  American  Institute  Mining  Engi- 
neers, Vol.  XXVI.,  p.  944.  "The  Enterprise  Mine,  Rico,  Col- 
orado," by  T.  A.  Rickard,  pp.  906-980. 


)  CLAY  ^g  LIME  SHALE 

FIG.   4.— DISAPPEARANCE   OF   A   FAULT. 


20  ACROSS  THE  SAN  JUAN  MOUNTAINS. 

it  is  said  that  the  black  shale  does  not  occur  in  the  lower 
beds  observable  in  the  vicinity  of  the  mine  workings.  I 
thought  so,  too,  until,  on  the  occasion  of  my  second  visit, 
I  noticed  an  exposure  of  black  shale  near  the  roadside  at 
a  point  a  short  distance  below  the  Bachelor  mill,  and,  pre- 
sumably, not  much  deeper  than  the  present  workings  of 
the  mine.  This  points  to  the  probability  of  there  being 
other  layers  of  black  shale  amid  the  sandstone  series 
traversed  by  the  dike  and  renders  it  unnecessary  to  go  far 
afield  for  a  possible  source  of  the  black  slivers  which  are 
so  characteristic  of  the  clastic  rock.  May  it  not  have  hap- 
pened, therefore,  that  the  dike  was  formed  by  the  crushing 
of  sandstone  and  black  shale  along  the  line  of  a  fissure 
which  was  filled  with  this  material  as  the  fissure  was 
slowly  formed,  much  as  water  rises  into  a  crack  in  the 
overlying  ice?  The  close  packing  of  the  material  within 
the  dike,  as  is  indicated  by  the  arrangement  of  fragments 
of  shale  parallel  to  the  walls,  is  suggestive  enough  of  sub- 
sequent pressure,  and  it  is  not  without  a  further  sugges- 
tion that  greater  pressure,  but  from  below,  may  have  orig- 
inally pushed  the  clastic  material  upward  into  the  fissure 
as  it  was  formed.  Water  may  have  been  present  to  give 
additional  mobility  to  the  broken  matter,  such  water  sub- 
sequently having  been  largely  expelled  by  the  squeezing  in 
of  the  fissure-walls.  Prof.  Judd  examined  some  specimens 
of  the  Bachelor  dike  which  I  sent  to  him,  and  he  con- 
cluded that  the  consolidation  of  the  fragments  was  due 
largely,  if  not  entirely,  to  the  later  chemical  action  of  per- 
colating solutions.  To  this  suggestion  there  is  the  con- 
firmation afforded  by  the  subsequent  deposition  of  ore  along 
the  course  of  the  dike. 

In  Figs.  2  and  3  the  Bachelor  dike  is  illustrated.  Fig.  2 
exhibits  the  relation  of  the  vein  to  the  dike.  A  B  is 
quartz,  carrying  streaks  of  galena  and  gray  copper  (tetra- 
hedrite) .  There  is  also  some  blende  present.  Inclusions  of 
country  (sandstone)  give  the  vein  a  mottled  look  along 
its  outer  edge,  between  D  and  E.  The  clastic  dike  B  C 
contains  several  large  pieces  of  shale,  and  a  few  signs  of 


22  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

ore.  The  fractures  alongside  the  dike,  at  X,  X,  appear  as 
dark  threads  of  sulphides.  In  Fig.  3,  taken  at  the  east 
breast  of  the  main  drift  in  the  adjoining  Khedive  mine, 
the  clastic  material  is  17  inches  wide,  and  exhibits  one  of 
those  vein-like  branches  or  off-shoots  which  are  occasionally 
to '  be  seen.  In  this  regard  the  clastic  material  behaves 
just  like  a  lava.  The  set-off  at  the  top  of  the  section  is 
also  a  common  feature.  Sympathetic  fractures  occur  in 
the  encasing  rock.  In  this  instance  the  vein  had  merged 
into  the  dike  and  could  only  be  seen  vaguely  in  the  form  of 
patches  of  ore  within  the  body  of  the  dike. 

The  whole  occurrence  is  one  of  great  interest.  If  these 
clastic  dikes  are  studied  with  reference  to  true  lava  dikes 
on  the  one  hand  and  veins  of  asphaltum  and  gilsonite 
on  the  other  hand,  it  should  be  possible  to  arrive  at  a  clearer 
idea  concerning  the  general  question  of  the  manner  in 
which  rocks  undergo  that  fracturing  which  precedes  ore 
deposition. 

The  next  day,  September  6,  our  cavalcade  clattered  up 
the  main  street  of  Ouray  en  route  to  Telluride  by  way  of 
the  Mt.  Sneffels  range.  Cloudless  weather,  not  unusual 
after  the  rains  of  late  August,  made  the  ride  up  Canon 
creek  to  the  Camp  Bird  mill  a  stimulating  pleasure.  Much 
of  this  road  is  cut  out  of  the  solid  rock,  in  many  respects 
it  is  a  fine  example  of  mountain  engineering,  and  it  is 
kept  in  good  order  because  it  serves  as  the  avenue  of  traffic 
for  two  of  the  largest  mines  in  Colorado — the  Eevenue 
and  the  Camp  Bird.  This  part  of  Colorado  owes  much 
to  an  energetic  little  man  who  began  by  being  an  Indian 
interpreter,  became  a  road-builder  and,  finally  developed 
into  a  successful  railroad  organizer.  Mr.  Otto  Mears  is 
called  the  "Pathfinder  of  the  San  Juan";  he  has  left  a 
monument  as  enduring  as  Thorwaldsen's  lion  of  Lucerne, 
which  lies  sculptured  in  the  rock  above  the  Swiss  lake  — 
and  much  more  useful — for  the  roads  which  Otto  Mears 
built  into  the  sides  of  the  cliffs  that  look  down  upon  the 
Uncompahgre  and  its  tributaries  have  contributed  in  a 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  23 

large  degree  to  the  successful  development  of  some  of  the 
best  mines  in  North  America. 

Mountain  roads  for  heavy  traffic  should  have  a  grade 
not  to  exceed  12  per  cent  and  a  width  of  about  15  ft. 
On  the  typical  American  high-road  of  to-day  the  cost  of 
freighting  by  wagon  averages  25  cents  per  ton  per  mile;10 
this  rate  is  always  exceeded  when  the  grade  is  above  12 
per  cent ;  in  the  mountains  the  rate  is  often  ten  times  as 
much,  because  the  loads  pulled  up  the  weary  zig-zags  are 
small  compared  to  the  horse-power  employed.  Thus,  with 
four  animals,  averaging  1,250  pounds  apiece,  a  load  of 
6,000  pounds,  distributed  between  the  wagon  and  its  con- 
tents, can  be  handled  along  an  average  mountain  road  at 
the  rate  of  1|  miles  per  hour.  When  the  gradient  exceeds 
12  per  cent  it  is  more  economical  to  pack,  that  is,  to 
transport  material  by  loading  it  upon  mules  or  burros. 
The  average  cost  of  this  method  of  transport  is  from  75 
cents  to  $1  per  ton-mile  when  there  is  no  return  load. 

We  overtook  a  train  of  burros  with  a  miscellaneous 
freight  of  planks,  groceries  and  boxes  of  dynamite  destined 
for  a  small  mine  on  Mt.  Potosi ;  these,  with  bulky  packages 
that  hid  their  ears  and  left  only  a  view  of  active  extremi- 
ties, looked  at  a  distance  for  all  the  world  like  a  migrating 
colony  of  Brobdingnagian  ants. 

Advancing  carefully  along  the  inside  of  the  road,  whose 
outer  parapet  stood  sheer  over  a  precipitous  cliff,  we  hur- 
ried our  horses  past  the  burro  train  and  soon  covered  the 
six  miles  between  Ouray  and  the  Camp  Bird  mill,  where 
Mr.  W.  J.  Cox,  the  manager,  gave  us  every  facility  for 
inspection.  The  mill  contains  60  stamps,  weighing  850 
pounds,  with  a  drop  of  6  to  8  inches,  made  100  times  per 
minute,  and  a  resulting  crushing  capacity-  of  180  to  190 
tons  per  day.  The  pulp  passes  through  cloth  screens  of 
26-mesh  and  No.  29  wire.  It  is  then  discharged  upon 
silver-plated  copper  tables,  which  are  the  full  width  of 


10  Mr.  Jas.  W.  Abbott  tells  me  that  on  European  roads  'the  cost 
ranges  from  6  to  13c.  per  ton-mile,  with  an  average  of  about  lOc. 


24  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

the  mortar,  54  inches,  and  have  a  length  of  16  ft.  The 
pulp  then  proceeds  through  classifiers,  which  distribute  it 
among  the  concentrators — Wilfley  tables  and  True  vanners. 
The  coarse  material  goes  to  vanners  which  have  corrugated 
belts,  the  finer  pulp  goes  to  the  plain  belted  vanners,  and 
the  slimes  pass  on  to  the  Wilfley  tables.  Experiments  were 
being  made  in  the  use  of  a  5-ft.  Huntington  mill  for  re- 
grinding  the  coarser  sands.  This  is  likely  to  prove  sug- 
gestive. The  tailings  are  delivered  to  the  cyanide  plant,  and 
are  pumped  into  vats,  having  a  capacity  of  275  tons  apiece, 


CAMP  BIRD  CYANIDE  PLANT. 

where  they  undergo  solution  for  nine  days.  Tests  were 
being  made  by  Mr.  Godfrey  Doveton,  who  had  charge  of 
the  cyanidation,  with  a  view  to  determining  whether  the 
Johnson  filter-press  cannot  be  advantageously  employed  in 
the  treatment  of  the  slimes  which  overflow  from  the  tanks ; 
at  present  the  press  is  only  used  in  connection  with  the 
precipitate  from  the  zinc-boxes.  In  Western  Australia  the 
large  filter-presses  have  a  capacity  up  to  6  tons  apiece,  with 
a  tendency  to  increase.  They  were  found  to  expedite  the 
treatment  of  slimes  and  to  economize  water.  All  experi- 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  25 

ments  made  in  this  direction  should  be  useful  because  they 
point  to  a  great  economy  of  time  and  labor. 

The  Camp  Bird  ore  is  one  of  the  most  docile.  The 
total  extraction  of  gold  is  fully,  sometimes  more  than,  90 
per  cent  of  the  assay-returns  from  the  crude  ore.  The 
latter  carried  about  two  ounces  in  gold  at  the  time  of  our 
visit;  the  concentrates  represent  about  10  per  cent  in 
weight  and  20  per  cent  of  the  value  of  the  original  ore, 
they  contain  9  to  12  per  cent  lead,  12  to  15  per  cent  zinc, 
14  to  16  per  cent  iron  and  20  to  22  per  cent  silica  (as 


CAMP    BIRD    CYANIDE    PLANT.     LOOKING    UP    CANOX. 

quartz).  They  also  carry  from  2J  to  4  oz.  of  gold  and 
from  11  to  15  oz.  of  silver  per  ton.  They  are  sacked  and 
sent  on  mule-back  to  Ouray,  the  charge  for  transport  being 
$2.50  per  ton — for  the  six  miles  of  down  grade.  Coal  is 
brought  up  as  return  freight  at  a  cost  of  $4  per  ton.  The 
concentrates  are  then  sent  over  the  range,  via  Marshall 
Pass,  to  the  Denver  smelters,  388  miles  distant,  at  a  cost, 
for  transport,  of  $7.50  per  ton  and  a  charge,  for  treatment, 
of  $7  to  $8  per  ton.  The  bullion,  resulting  from  amal- 
gamation and  cyanidation,  is  sent  under  escort  every  day 


x?b  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

to  Ouray,  whence  it  is  sent  through  an  express  company 
to  the  mint  at  Denver.11 

After  partaking  of  Mr.  Cox's  hospitality  we  mounted 
again  and  began  the  ascent  to  the  Camp  Bird  mine  in 
Imogene  basin.  As  we  surmounted  the  first  rise  we  found 
ourselves  in  a  wide  amphitheater  of  serrated  ridges  with 
a  broad  gap  in  the  direction  whence  we  had  come.  Look- 
ing backward  down  Canon  creek:  one  could  not  fail  to  ob- 
serve the  fact  of  a  succession  of  geological  formations  on 
account  of  the  variations  in  the  color  of  the  rocks.  The 
road  from  Ouray  first  cuts  through  a  gray  ridge  of  Silurian 
limestone,  then  passes  over  reddish  beds  of  Upper  Car- 
boniferous lime  and  shale  which,  in  turn,  are  unconform- 
ably  overlaid  by  a  Tertiary  conglomerate  whose  nearly  hori- 
zontal beds  have  a  wide  extent  throughout  the  adjoining 
mining  district  of  Telluride.  This  San  Miguel  con- 
glomerate, as  it  is  called,  has  a  particular  interest  because 
it  lies  at  the  base  of  a  great  series  of  fragmental  volcanic 
rocks  (chiefly  andesite-breccia)  and  lava-flows  which  in- 
close the  majority  of  the  important  mines  of  the  region. 
This  series  is  called  the  San  Juan  formation.  The  road 
intersects  the  base  of  the  series  a  short  distance  below  the 
Camp  Bird  mill  -at  about  9,100  ft.  above  sea  level,  as  is 
shown  by  the  accompanying  photograph,  where  A  B  marks 
the  line  of  separation  between  the  two  formations.  Our 
trail  continued  to  pass  over  successive  layers  of  the  breccia 
and  its  intercalated  flows  of  lava  until  we  reached  the  sum- 
mit of  the  range,  at  13,800  ft.  When  a  mine  is  situated 
in  this  country  of  andesitic  breccia  the  distance  separating 
the  deepest  workings  from  the  sedimentary  rocks  at  the 
base  of  the  San  Juan  formation  becomes  a  matter  of  prac- 
tical importance,  because  experience  warrants  the  expecta- 
tion that  an  impoverishment  will  be  encountered  when  the 
vein  passes  out  of  the  volcanic  series.  The  Camp  Bird 


11  Since  the  date  referred  to,  an  excellent  account  of  the  Camp 
Bird  mill  and  mine  has  been  prepared  by  Messrs.  Purington, 
Doveton  and  Woods.  See  Transactions  American  Institute  of 
Mining  Engineers,  1902. 


A  BIT  OF  GEOLOGICAL  EVIDENCE  OX  THE  ROADSIDE. 


28 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 


lower  tunnel,  for  example,  is  about  2,100  ft.  above  the 
San  Miguel  conglomerate,  so  that  there  is  plenty  of  room 
for  further  downward  development.  A  generalized  sec- 
tion of  the  geology  and  topography  is  given  in  the  accom- 
panying sketch,  which  I  have  borrowed  from  Mr.  H.  A. 
Titcomb's  article  in  the  Columbia  School  of  Mines  Quar- 
terly, of  November,  1902. 

The  Virginius,  a  neighboring  mine,  has  an  adit — the 
Revenue  tunnel — which  strikes  the  vein  at  a  point  2,400  ft. 
below  the  outcrop  and  10,800  ft.  above  sea  level.  The  con- 


SECTION    ALONG    UNC0MFAHGRE      CRtEK 

FIG.  5. 

glomerate  is  supposed  to  be  about  1,000  ft.  deeper.  A 
shaft  has  proved  the  vein  for  900  ft.  below  the  adit,  so 
that  the  total  exploration  on  the  vein  extends  for  a  vertical 
height  of  3,300  ft.,  which  is  the  deepest  development  at- 
tained by  any  mine  in  Colorado.  The  Virginius  vein  is 
remarkable  in  other  respects  also.  It  has  been  worked  for 
more  than  20 -years.  For  the  first  400  ft.  in  depth  the 
vein  was  stoped  continuously,  although  its  width  only 
ranged  between  a  finger  and  a  hand's  breadth.  The  ore 
was  chiefly  gray  copper — argentiferous  fahlerz — and  aver- 


REVENUE   MILLS,   MT.   SNEFFELS,   COLORADO. 


30  ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

aged  400  to  600  oz.  silver  per  ton.  At  about  1,200  ft. 
down  the  shaft,  which  followed  the  vein,  entered  a  poor 
zone,  which  extended  for  300  ft.  further.  At  the  level  of 
the  Revenue  adit12  another  poor  zone,  about  150  ft.  thick, 
was  encountered.  The  new  vertical  shaft,  sunk  from  the 
adit,  has  found  good  ore,  30  inches  wide,  at  550  ft.  The 
Virginius,  by  the  way,  has  a  large  electric  installation 
which  operates  both  mine  and  mill.  The  electric  cars  used 
for  underground  traction  are  remarkable  in  taking  the 
high  pressure  of  800  to  900  volts  from  a  bare  wire  placed 
about  the  height  of  a  man's  head.  The  power  is  generated 
from  a  succession  of  Pelton  wheels,  which  use  the  water 
of  Canon  creek.  They  present  an  interesting  feature  in 
the  fact  that  the  nozzles  are  worn  out  in  ten  days  by  the 
action  of  sand  at  high  velocity,  which  is  the  consequence 
of  using  a  stream  charged  with  tailings  from  a  mill. 

On  arrival  at  the  Camp  Bird  the  superintendent,  Mr. 
William  Beaton,  piloted  our  party  through  a  portion  of 
the  workings.  Both  Mr.  F.  L.  Ransome  and  Mr.  C.  W. 
Purington  have  recently  described  this  lode  in  detail.13  A 
production,  up  to  date,  of  about  $7,500,000  places  the 
Camp  Bird  among  the  great  mines  of  Colorado.  It  is 
also  interesting  as  having  been  until  lately  the  property 
of  the  man  who  opened  it  up,  Mr.  Thomas  F.  Walsh. 

The  history  of  the  discovery  of  this  celebrated  mine 
is  curious.  The  only  outcrop  on  the  vein  for  several 
thousand  feet  is  in  a  small  gully  right  at  the  head  of 
Imogene  basin.  A  claim  was  located  on  this  outcrop  in 
1877,  but  nothing  further  was  done  because  no  ore 
of  any  value  was  exposed  at  this  point.  William 
Weston  and  George  Barber,  who  were  the  owners,  made  a 


12  It  is  a  pity  that  the  word  "tunnel"  is  so  often  misapplied. 
In  the  above   case,   and  ordinarily  in  mining,   the  word   "adit" 
should  be  used.     A  tunnel  is  a  gallery  or  working  which  reaches 
from    daylight    to    daylight,    like    a    railroad    tunnel.       A    main 
cross-cut  or  level  which  connects  a  mine  with  daylight  is  an  adit. 

13  Bulletin  No.  182.     United  States  Geological  Survey,  pp.  89-90 
and  200-204,  and  Transactions  American  Institute  of  Mining  Engi- 
neers, May,   1902.     Also  Engineering  and  Mining  Journal,  May 
30,  1903. 


32  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

proposal  to  H.  W.  Reed  and  Caleb  Reed  that  if  they  would 
run  a  cross-cut  tunnel,  which  would  cut  the  vein  at  about 
a  depth  of  150  ft.,  they  could  have  the  option  of  locating 
a  new  claim  on  whichever  side  of  the  cross-cut  they  chose. 
The  cross-cut  was  run,  and  in  due  course  intersected  the 
vein.  The  Reed  brothers  drifted  50  ft.  to  the  west  and 
took  up  a  claim  on  that  side.  This  was  then  patented 
under  the  name  of  the  Una  claim.  On  the  eastern  side 
the  Gertrude  claim  was  pegged  out  by  Weston  and  Barber, 
who,  later  on,  sold  it  to  the  Allied  Mines  Company.  This 
was  in  1878.  Subsequently  the  company  extended  a  drift 
for  40  ft.  into  the  Gertrude  ground,  but  found  no  ore  of 
any  value;  later  still,  another  10  ft.  was  driven,  so  as  to 
make  the  distance  50  ft.,  and  thus  qualify  for  patent. 
This  was  in  1884.  The  ore  in  the  last  10  ft.  was  not  as- 
sayed because  the  work  was  only  done  to  fulfill  legal  re- 
quirements and  the  first  40  ft.  of  the  drift  had  carried  no 
pay  ore.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  drift  had,  in  the  last 
two  or  three  feet,  broken  into  rich  ore ;  it  remained  there 
undetected  until  1896,  when  Walsh  broke  some  samples  and 
had  them  assayed,  thereby  taking  the  decisive  step  toward 
becoming  a  millionaire.  Moral :  Never  fail  to  test  the  ore  of 
a  drift  which  is  penetrating  into  new  ground,  and  never 
assume  that  ore  is  poor  because  it  looks  like  ore  you  know 
to  be  poor. 

The  rest  of  the  story  is  well  known.  Walsh  was  an 
experienced  miner  who  had  met  with  some  success  both 
at  Leadville  and  Rico.  In  1896  he  was  manager  of  the 
pyritic  smelter  erected  at  Silverton  for  the  treatment  of 
the  ores  sent  down  from  Red  Mountain  by  the  Yankee 
Girl  and  Guston  mines.  Walsh  had,  in  1894,  organized 
the  company  which  put  up  this  plant.  In  the  search  for 
silicious  ores  he  investigated  the  mines  of  the  surrounding 
country,  not  only  those  in  operation,  but  also  the  aban- 
doned prospects.  He  acquired  the  Hidden  Treasure  mine, 
in  Imogene  basin — this  was  a  low-grade  silver-lead  prop- 
erty, which  has  never  done  much.  In  July,  1896,  he  went 
to  see  how  work  was  going  on  at  the  Hidden  Treasure, 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  33 

and  incidentally  he  noticed  some  pieces  of  pink  spar  amid 
the  debris  scattered  at  the  foot  of  the  cliffs,  which  form 
the  upper  limits  of  Imogene  basin.  This  pink  spar  he 
took  to  be  fluorite,  and  because  it  reminded  him  of  Cripple 
Creek,  where  also  he  had  mined  with  some  success,  he 
made  a  mental  note  of  the  occurrence.  In  the  following 
September  he  revisited  the  locality  and  climbed  up  into 
the  old  Gertrude  adit,  from  which  he  inferred  the  pink 
spar  to  have  come.  It  was  rhodochrosite ;  but  no  matter. 
It  led  him  to  take  samples  at  the  breast  of  the  east  drift. 
They  were  sent  at  once  to  Ouray  to  be  assayed.  The  re- 
turns gave  several  ounces  of  gold  per  ton.  More  samples 
were  taken  and  sent  to  Leadville  for  assay.  The  results 
were  confirmatory,  so  he  went  to  work  quietly  and  began 
the  steady  consolidation  of  the  adjoining  property.  Mr. 
Walsh's  success  was  the  reward  following  many  years  of 
most  energetic  search,  a  search  backed  by  unusual  experi- 
ence in  mining  and  extending  over  a  large  area  which 
contained  a  great  number  of  deserted  old  workings  likely 
to  prove  remunerative  under  new  economic  conditions. 

The  main  level  of  the  Camp  Bird  is  now  over  a  mile  in 
length,  so  that  when  we  emerged  from  underground  it 
became  necessary  to  make  haste  in  order  to  cross  the 
range  before  dark.  Ouray  is  7,806  feet  above  sea  level, 
the  No.  2  level  of  the  Camp  Bird  is  at  11,510  feet,  and 
the  place  where  the  trail  crosses  the  divide  is  at  an  alti- 
tude of  about  13,800  feet.  The  trail  is  a  good  one  in 
summer,  so  that  we  did  not  require  to  lead  our  horses 
save  in  the  steepest  portions  of  the  rise  and  in  the  abrupt 
descent  on  the  other  side.  When  we  attained  the  summit 
a  halt  was  called  in  order  that  we  might  take  in  the  splen- 
did panorama  of  mountains  which  lay  outspread  on  either 
hand.  Looking  back  over  the  course  we  had  traveled  we 
could  see  the  shadows  hastening  to  cover  the  valley  of 
Canon  creek  and  the  sheltered  corner  among  the  hills 
where  Ouray  lay  concealed;  in  the  far  northeast  the  dark 
mass  of  the  Uncompahgre  plateau  loomed  purple  in  the 
fading  light.  Looking  the  other  way  the  grim  desola- 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  35 

tion  of  time-worn  summits  and  crumbling  crags  reached 
down  into  the  gloomy  gorge  of  the  San  Miguel,  which  sud- 
denly broadened  into  the  sunlit  valley  of  Telluride, 
checkered  with  cultivation  and  bright  with  the  gleam  of 
blue  water.  Beyond  were  green  foothills,  out  of  which 
arose  the  sculptured  mass  of  Mt.  Wilson,  silhouetted 
against  the  setting  sun,  and  further  still,  northwestward, 
rim  upon  rim  of  far-off  hills  fading  into  the  bourne  of 
distant  Utah. 

The  descent  to  Telluride  was  tedious,  for  it  meant  lead- 
ing our  horses  most  of  the  way — and  some  horses  are  par- 
ticularly slow  to  be  led,  however  willing  to  be  ridden; 
besides,  the  drop  from  the  top  of  the  range  to  the  valley 
is  just  five  thousand  feet  in  the  course  of  five  miles.  All 
the  way  down  one  passes  mines  and  mills ;  of  the  latter,  the 
new  Tomboy  mill  in  Savage  basin  loomed  conspicuous 
through  the  dusk. 

At  first  sight  it  seems  curious  to  build  a  large  mill  at 
an  altitude  of  nearly  12,000  feet,  instead  of  choosing  a 
site  in  the  valley  and  transporting  the  product  of  the  mine 
over  an  aerial  tramway.  This  is  a  much-mooted  question. 
As  a  rule  the  valley  site  is  preferable,  because  of  the 
availability  of  a  water  supply,  the  greater  cheapness  of  fuel 
for  power  and  heating  purposes,  the  nearness  to  a  base  of 
supplies,  the  facility  which  the  tramway  itself  gives  for 
transmitting  materials  up  to  the  mine,  the  more  kindly 
conditions  of  living  for  workmen,  etc.  If  water  can  be 
secured  at  the  mine,  the  erection  of  a  mill  close-by  saves 
the  cost  of  a  tramway,  that  is,  an  amount  ranging,  say, 
from  $20,000  to  $50,000;  but  the  water-supply  of  the 
high  altitudes  is  so  closely  dependent  upon  melting  snows 
as  to  be  uncertain,  unless  a  reservoir  or  natural  lake  af- 
fords a  chance  for  storage.  Of  course,  if  the  mill  is  at 
the  mine,  the  concentrates  have  to  meet  the  cost  of  car- 
riage to  the  valley  and  this  can  be,  in  part,  set  off  as 
against  the  expense  of  tramming  the  ore  itself  to  the  mill, 
if  situated  at  a  lower  level.  The  Tomboy  pays  $2.75  per 
ton  for  packing  concentrates  from  the  mill  to  the  head  of 


36  ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

the  valley,  at  Pandora,  and  as  the  ore  yields  from  8  to  12 
per  cent  of  concentrates  this  cost  represents  about  25c.  per 
ton  of  crude  ore.  The  item  of  fuel  for  motive  power  is 
eliminated  by  the  electric  transmission  of  power.  Black- 
smith coal  is  carried  by  the  pack  train  to  the  Tomboy  at 
a  cost  of  $8  per  ton,  an  amount  one-half  of  which  rep- 
resents the  expense  of  transport.  The  mill  and  other 
buildings  are  heated  by  steam;  in  some  cases  by  low-pres- 
sure boilers,  in  others  by  high-pressure  boilers  with  re- 
ducing valve.  In  summer  40  tons  of  coal  are  consumed 
per  month;  in  winter,  200  tons  are  consumed  per  month. 
Coal  costs  an  average  of  $10  per  ton,  delivered  at  the  mine. 
Water  for  milling  purposes  is  obtained  from  Lake  Ptar- 
migan, by  a  pipe-line  one  and  three-quarter  miles  long.1* 
The  lake  is  just  over  the  range  and  only  350  feet  below  the 
crest,  so  that  the  light  pumps  are  sufficient.  These  are 
operated  by  electricity,  which  is  bought  from  a  large 
power  company  in  the  valley,  at  the  rate  of  $80  per  h.p. 
per  annum.  The  Smuggler  Union  mine,  which  has  its 
own  generating  plant,  pays  only  $35  to  $40  per  h.p.  per 
annum,  but  as  against  this,  of  course,  is  offset  the  interest 
and  redemption  of  the  capital  used  for  an  expensive  in- 
stallation. On  the  whole,  therefore,  it  may  be  said  that  the 
comparison  of  conditions  affecting  the  operation  of  a  mill 
in  the  valley  and  that  of  a  mill  at  the  mine  is  without 
decisive  result  and  depends  entirely  upon  local  factors. 
One  of  these  is  the  ability  to  secure  a  good  mill-site  at  a 
reasonable  price.  Another  possible  factor  is  the  snowslide. 
To  a  stranger  the  interruption  and  damage  from  this 
source  would  seem  to  present  a  very  serious  obstacle  to  the 
use  of  a  tramway.  It  does,  but  to  the  same  extent  it  af- 
fects all  the  operations  in  a  precipitous  snowy  mountain 
region.  Last  spring15  the  Smuggler-Union  tramway  was 


14  The  line  starts  with  a  5-in.  pipe,  which  is  reduced  to  4  inches 
at  the  summit;  from  the  summit  to  the  mill  it  is  reduced,  grad- 
ually, to  2%  inches.  For  these  and  other  data  I  am  indebted  to 
Mr.  John  Herron,  the  manager  of  the  Tomboy  mine. 

18  The  writer  refers  to  1902. 


38  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

stopped  for  several  weeks  as  a  consequence  of  the  damage 
done  by  a  slide,  and  during  the  same  season  the  Liberty 
Bell  mine-buildings  were  swept  away,  so  that  the  mill  was 
idle  for  four  months.  In  the  latter  case  eighteen  lives 
were  lost,  and  the  majority  of  these  belonged  to  rescue 
parties  who  set  out  to  the  aid  of  those  who  were  caught 
by  the  first  slide.  Successive  avalanches  entombed  the 
rescuers. 

As  a  rule,  it  is  possible  to  predict  the  track  of  snow- 
slides,  because  they  commonly  follow  the  line  of  destruction 
marked  out  by  them  in  previous  years,  but  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  great  injury  to  life  and  property  due  to  snow- 
slides  is  just  the  one  which  is  caused  by  the  unexpected 
slide  which  takes  an  entirely  unsuspected  line  of  descent. 
Such  was  the  cause  of  the  Liberty  Bell  catastrophe,  for, 
of  course,  the  buildings  wTere  erected  at  a  spot  confidently 
believed  to  be  immune  from  such  a  danger. 

The  destructiveness  of  a  snowslide  must  be  seen  to  be 
appreciated;  buildings  and  tramways  are  as  toys  before 
its  fierce  oncoming  and  men  in  the  path  of  its  descent  are 
as  straws  in  a  whirlwind.  In  fact,  much  of  the  damage  is 
due  to  the  vacuum  caused  by  the  rapid  motion  of  a  mass 
of  snow  and  the  cyclonic  disturbance  which  follows  in 
its  wake.  I  have  often  watched  them  descending  a  neigh- 
boring ravine,  when  myself  out  of  all  chance  of  danger. 
The  thunder  of  its  tempestuous  descent  first  calls  one's 
attention,  and  then  one  sees  the  mass  of  snow  gathering 
underlying  rocks,  uprooting  trees,  amid  a  quickly  gather- 
ing mist  of  snow  particles  driven  fiercely  by  the  whirlwind 
in  the  rear.  The  rushing  mass  will  not  stop  at  the  bottom 
of  the  slope,  but  its  momentum  will  carry  it  some  distance 
up  the  opposite  declivity,  while  all  the  forest  trembles  and 
the  air  is  darkened  with  a  snow  mist. 

The  stretch  of  country  covered  by  Marshall  and  Savage 
basins,  and  thence  to  the  valley  at  Pandora,  has  seen  many 
a  snowslide.  A  long  tale  of  woeful  fatalities  and  romantic 
heroism  could  be  told  concerning  these  three  or  four  miles 
of  mountain  land. 


40  ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

In  the  cemetery  at  Telluride  there  are  many  large  graves 
inclosing  the  remains  of  groups  of  unfortunate  miners  who 
were  swept  into  eternity  by  the  fateful  avalanche.  Their 
resting  places  are  unadorned  by  showy  tombstone  or 
grandiose  epitaph,  but  close-by  a  new  white  marble  monu- 
ment attracts  the  passer-by  to  read  the  inscription  upon  its 
face.  It  tells  a  startling  story  to  those  who  can  read  be- 
tween the  lines.  In  July,  1901,  the  management  of  the 
Smuggler  Union  mine  introduced  the  system  of  working 
by  contract,  a  system  which  results  in  paying  a  workman 
according  to  his  work,  and  which,  therefore,  is  directly 
opposed  to  the  underlying  principle  of  unionism,  which 
demands  an  equal  wage  for  the  idle  and  the  energetic,  the 
capable  and  the  incapable.  There  was  a  strike,  the  mem- 
bers of  the  union,  for  the  most  part,  refused  to  work,  while 
a  large  proportion  of  experienced  miners  accepted  the  con- 
tract system  and  remained  at  the  mine.  On  the  3rd  of 
July,  the  eve  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  a  body 
of  strikers  attacked  the  mine,  shot  indiscriminately  into 
the  bunkhouses,  offices,  and  other  buildings,  succeeding  in 
killing  eight  non-union  men  and  in  driving  the  remainder 
over  the  range.  In  this  cowardly  assault  one  striker  was 
shot.  It  is  his  tombstone  that  so  conspicuously  adorns  the 
Telluride  cemetery;  upon  it  there  is  this  inscription: 
"Erected  by  the  16-to-l  Miners'  Union  in  memory  of  (then 
follows  the  man's  name).  Born  in  Koojoki  Wora,  Finland. 
Died  at  Smuggler,  Colo.,  July  3,  1901,  aged  27  years." 
Then  follow  these  noble  lines  of  Longfellow : 


'In  the  world's  broad  field  of  battle, 

In  the  bivouac  of  life. 
Be  not  like  dumb  driven  cattle — 

Be  a  hero  in  the  strife." 


This — this  is  the  prostitution  of  poetry!  Remember, 
too,  that  no  one  has  ever  been  punished  for  the  murdering 
of  the  eight  miners  killed  on  that  same  day,  while  the  one 
murderer,  killed  in  the  act,  is  commemorated  in  marble 
and  in  poem ! 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  41 

This  intolerable  outrage  emphasizes  the  conditions  of 
affairs  in  this  district.  There  has  been  a  manly  effort 
made  by  three  or  four  of  the  mine  managers  to  protect  the 
rights  of  property  and  good  citizenship,  but  it  has  been 
handicapped  by  the  interference  of  political  considerations. 
Mr.  A.  L.  Collins,  the  manager  of  the  Smuggler  Union 
mine,  told  me  of  the  receipt  by  him,  from  the  secretary  of 
the  union,  of  a  list  of  "scabs,"  namely,  men  who  refused 
to  accept  the  edicts  of  the  union — 16-to-l  union,  if  you 
please ! — and  this  list  was  interesting  because  the  names 
upon  it  could  be  pronounced ! — that  is,  they  belonged  to 
men  of  American  and  English  descent,  as  against  the  bulk 
of  the  miners  in  the  district  who  are  Austrians,  Italians, 
Slavs,  etc.  Mr.  Collins  inserted  a  paid  advertisement  in 
each  of  the  local  papers  promising  work  at  the  mines  under 
his  charge  to  any  man  on  that  list. 

The  above  lines  had  just  been  written,  on  November  19, 
1902,  when  the  news  of  the  assassination  of  Arthur  Collins 
sjiocked  the  whole  profession  of  which  he  was  so  honorable  a 
member.  I  have  elsewhere16  expressed  my  feeling  concern- 
ing this  tragedy.  It  is  a  bitter  price  to  pay  for  frontier 
lawlessness  and  that  political  expediency  which  holds  the 
law  bound  in  its  slimy  coils. 

The  mine  which  was  the  scene  of  these  unhappy  doings 
is  one  of  the  largest  in  Colorado;  it  was  discovered  in 
1875,  when  one  of  the  claims,  the  Sheridan,  was  first  lo- 
cated. A  stray  occurrence  of  the  mineral  sylvanite,  the 
telluride  of  gold  and  silver,  was  the  cause  of  the  naming 
of  the  mining  camp.  The  lode  proved  remarkably  persist- 
ent in  richness  through  the  Mendota,  Sheridan,  Smug- 
gler and  Union  claims,  and  beyond  them  into  other  mines ; 
it  has  been  traced  for  over  four  miles  on  its  strike  and  it 
has  been  continuously  stoped  along  one  portion  for  a  length 
of  5,000  feet.  The  Smuggler  lode  has  yielded  altogether 
about  $12,000,000.  It  cuts  through  the  crest  of  the  range 
at  13,200  feet,  where  it  is  encased  in  rhyolite;  at  12,450 

16  The  editori/il  on  the  "Tragedy  at  Telluride"  in  the  Engineer- 
ing and  Mining  Journal  of  November  29,  1902. 


42  ACROSS    THE   SAN"   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

feet  it  passes   into  a  sheet  of  augite-andesite   which   is 
550  feet  thick,  and  below  this  it  goes  through  the  great 
series  of  andesitic  breccias  which  reach  down  to  the  San 
Miguel  conglomerate,  at  an  altitude  of  10,000  feet.     The 
variation  in  geological  environment  has  not  been  without 
its  effect  upon  the  character  of  the  vein.     Mr.  Collins  in- 
formed me  that  the  payable  part  of  the  vein  reaches  up 
to  the  rhyolite  cap,  the  limit  of  productiveness  coincid- 
ing to  a  remarkable  degree  with  the  base  of  the  rhyolite, 
where  the  vein  becomes  pinched, — a  mere  persistent  parting 
easily  discernible  even  at  a  distance  on  account  of  the 
discoloration  of  the  encasing  rock.     In  the  rhyolite,  the 
vein  is  accompanied  by  a  little  mud  or  selvage  and  some 
silver  ore,  in  patches,17  but  no  cellular  quartz  such  as  can 
be  seen  lower  down.     This  bit  of  evidence  does  not  favor 
the  idea  of  a  secondary  enrichment  of  the  lower  ore-bodies 
by  means  of  the  removal  of  values  in  the  uppermost  por- 
tions of  the  vein.    In  the  augite-andesite  the  bonanza  ore- 
bodies  occur,  the  richest  masses  of  silver  ore  coinciding 
roughly  in  their  distribution  with  certain  harder,  almost 
horizontal,  layers  of  this  andesite.     Similarly,  in  the  un- 
derlying breccia,  which  is  fine-grained,  the  pinches  in  the 
vein  occur  along  nearly  level  lines   coinciding  with  the 
bedding-planes  of  the  country.     Good  ore  makes  in  zones, 
but  oxidation  reaches  downward  irregularly,  and  does  not 
coincide  with  enrichment. 

The  Smuggler  vein,  as  the  drawings  will  show,  is  no- 
tably banded ;  the  hanging  wall  is  usually  well-defined  and 
carries  a  casing,  immediately  underneath  which  a  persistent 
quartz-leader  is  generally  to  be  seen.  This  leader  is  the 
first  part  of  the  vein  to  show  oxidation.  The  footwall  is 
"frozen"  with  quartz  stringers,  which  merge  into  the  coun- 
try. The  general  structure  of  the  vein  suggests  multiple 
fracturing  with  but  slight  actual  displacement,  and  a  shat- 


17  Mr.  John  B.  Farish  has  since  informed  me  that  in  the  ad- 
joining ground,  of  the  Humboldt  mine,  he  found  that  these 
patches  of  ore  in  the  rhyolite  indicated  ore-bodies  in  the  under- 
lying andesite. 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 


43 


tering  of  the  rock  without  much  actual  crushing.  Vugs, 
or  crystal-lined  cavities,  are  frequent;  they  are  due  to 
crustificationj  or  crystal-lined  growth,  around  the  sides  of 
spaces  separating  pieces  of  broken  rock. 

The  accompanying  drawings  were  made  underground 
during  a  visit  in  1901;  Fig.  6  represents  the  back  of  a 
stope  at  the  ninth  level.  On  the  hanging  there  is  a  quartz 


A  9 


FIG.  6. 

seam,  A  A.  This  is  usually  the  rich  streak;  if  any  free 
gold  is  to  be  found  in  the  lode,  it  will  be  found  there.  The 
quartz  is  white  and  rather  massive,  with  crystalline  vugs 
which  are  frequent.  The  next  band,  B  B,  is  a  strip  of  hard 
country,  included  in  the  vein;  the  part  E  to  D  is  also 
breccia,  with  some  quartz;  the  footwall  country,  D  F,  is 


44  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

full  of  quartz  stringers  which  drop  into  the  vein ;  the  outer 
country  contains  vugs  and  some  quartz.  On  the  hanging 
there  is  a  soft  shaly  band,  about  3  feet  wide,  which  is 
used  by  the  miners  as  a  "shooting  course,'"  that  is,  it  is 
recognized  as  an  easy  line  of  fracture  and  separation  be- 
tween the  ore  and  the  rock. 

Fig.  7,  obtained  in  a  neighboring  stope,  suggests  the 
arrangement  of  ore  in  relation  to  the  bedding  of  the  brec- 
cia. The  hanging-wall  leader  is  represented  by  the  stringer 
B  B.  A  B  is  a  casing  of  soft  shaly  country  corresponding 
to  the  shooting  course  described  in  connection  with  Fig. 
6.  D  D  are  seams  of  white  quartz  carrying  iron-stained 
vugs.  E  E  is  a  quartzose  band.  The  included  country  in 
the  middle  of  the  vein,  from  B  to  E,  is  mottled  by  breccia- 
tion  and  does  not  contain  as  much  quartz  as  is  usual.  The 
footwall  is  hard. 

The  lode  yields  a  wonderful  array  of  fine  crystals  of 
quartz,  siderite,  calcite,  argentite,  rhodochrosite,  gold  and 
silver.  The  transparency  of  most  of  these,  especially  the 
quartz  and  the  siderite,  suggests  an  extremely  slow  process 
of  crystallization.  Siderite,  the  carbonate  of  iron,  occurs 
in  handsome  yellow  crystals  encrusting  both  quartz  and 
calcite.  Calcite  was  the  last  mineral  to  be  precipitated,  and 
it  is  found  lying  upon  the  quartz  which  lines  the  geodes 
or  vugs.  Ehodonite,  the  silicate  of  manganese,  occurs  in 
irregular  bands,  usually  on  the  footwall  or  else  in  the  main 
body  of  the  pay-ore.  Ehodochrosite,  the  carbonate  of  man- 
ganese,'is  occasionally  seen  in  rose-red  crystals.  Gold  is 
found  in  crystalline  aggregates  forming  specimens  of  great 
beauty.  Wire  gold  also  occurs.  Both  the  wire  and  the 
crystalline  gold  have  the  composition  of  the  true  alloy,  An 
Ag.18  In  the  upper  workings  the  native  gold  is  purer. 

While  the  lodes  of  the  vicinity,  as  a  rule,  have  the  gen- 
eral structure  of  sheeted  bands  of  country  rather  than  that 
of  large  fault-fractures,  it  is  a  fact  that  several  of  the 


58  A  fact  determined  by  the  late  Arthur  L.  Collins,  who  gave 
me  many  of  the  data  contained  in  this  description  of  the  Smug- 
gler-Union. 


i  ''j|?!|lfe!w;-;:^.    $:'':' ^'hl 

^HK^^MiK 

iiK*^mi&M 


•<mw*%':^i/->$?W-  * 


.  .'•  -    a  /      *  *   •'•'. 


.    .-  -       ••:  ?rf 


fc/*;.J  SRECC/fl 


SHAM  COUNT**? 


SMUGGLER  LODE. 

FIG.  7. 


46  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

poorer  veins  follow  pronounced  lines  of  faulting.  I 
measured  the  vertical  dislocations,  which  coincide  with  the 
Contention  and  the  Allegheny  veins;  in  the  first  case  the 
displacement  is  58  ft.  and  in  the  second  it  is  21  ft. 
The  Pandora  faults  the  Smuggler  about  50  ft.19  The  Vir- 
ginius  vein  is  faulted  twenty  feet  by  a  crossvein.20  In 
these  cases  it  is  the  poor  vein  which  follows  the  fault. 

We  spent  a  couple  of  days  at  Telluride,  visiting  the  mines 
in  the  vicinity.  Two  of  our  party  went  up  to  the  Contention 
mine,  and  avoided  a  long  ride  over  road  and  trail  by  get- 
ting into  one  of  the  buckets  of  the  tramway  which  makes  a 
bee  line  up  the  mountain  side.  The  aerial  voyage  was 
made  speedily  and  safely,  if  not  very  comfortably.  In  win- 
ter the  managers  of  many  of  the  properties  find  it  ex- 
pedient to  make  their  trips  to  the  mines  over  the  tram 
route  and  in  spring,  when  the  deadly  snowslide  may  launch 
itself  down  the  mountain  at  any  time,  it  is  much  safer 
to  travel  on  the  tramway,  not  because  it  is  always  immune 
from  this  peril,  but  because  of  the  shorter  time  to  which  one 
is  exposed  to  danger  in  making  the  journey  on  the  tram- 
way, as  compared  to  floundering  painfully  on  horseback 
or  toiling  patiently  uphill  on  snowshoes.  The  Contention 
is  an  interesting  lode  because  it  is  productive  of  gold  ore 
in  a  Tertiary  conglomerate,  not  in  the  form  of  a  bed  of 
conglomerate  impregnated  with  gold,21  but  a  nearly  vertical 
vein-fracture  cutting  through  a  nearly  horizontal  formation 
and  passing  above  this  conglomerate  into  the  andesite- 
breccia  series  and  below  the  conglomerate  into  sandstones 
of  the  Jurassic.  This  is  an  example  of  the  great  diversity 
of  geological  environment  which  distinguishes  the  Telluride 
district;  within  a  small  area  productive  gold  and  silver 
veins  have  been  worked  not  only  in  the  Tertiary  volcanics 


19  John   A.    Porter.       "The   Smuggler-Union    Mines,    Telluride, 
Colorado."     Transactions    American    Institute    of    Mining    Engi- 
neers.    Vol.  XXVL,  p.  452. 

20  C.  W.  Purington.     "Preliminary  Report  on  the  Mining  Indus- 
tries of  the  Telluride  Quadrangle,  Colorado,"  p.  837. 

21  Such   as   the   conglomerate  beds   of   the   Witwatersrand,   for 
example. 


48  ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

and  the  Tertiary  conglomerate  underneath  them,  but  also  in 
Jurassic  limestone  (the  Sawpit  mines)  and  in  Triassic 
sandstone  (the  Allegheny).  This,  however,  is  a  subject 
too  wide  for  more  than  incidental  reference.22 

The  big  mines  of  the  Telluride  district  afford  examples 
of  good  management  and  the  close  economy  which  goes 
with  such  management.  During  the  past  fiscal  year  the 
Tomboy  treated  85,726  tons  of  ore,  the  average  yield  of 
which  was  $9.98  and  the  average  cost  per  ton,  $5.85.  With 
the  help  of  the  new  mill,  the  costs  are  expected  to  be 
brought  down  to  $5.50.  The  Liberty  Bell  mine,  for  the 
year  ending  September  30,  1902,  despite  snowslides  and 
other  unforeseen  delays,  handled  67,439  tons  for  a  yield  of 
$7.15  per  ton,  at  a  total  working  cost  of  $5.53  per  ton; 
while  the  Smuggler-Union,  on  a  larger  tonnage,  has 
brought  the  total  expenses  to  just  under  $4  per  ton.  In 
1902  the  average  mining  costs  were  $2.90  and  mill- 
ing expenses  $0.90  for  92,917  tons.  Summer  costs  were 
better  than  those  in  winter;  for  instance  in  April,  1902, 
the  mining  cost  was  $2.81  and  the  milling  $0.74,  for  12,- 
979  tons.  The  figures  for  mining  include  expenses  of  ore 
up  to  delivery  at  dump. 

In  referring  to  good  management  it  will  not  be  out  of 
place  to  mention  the  action  of  the  manager  of  the  Tomboy 
mine,  who,  when  the  old  mine  had  evidently  become  ex- 
hausted, was  enterprising  enough  to  secure  options  on 
adjoining  ground,  at  that  time  giving  promise  of  a  good 
thing.  Mr.  Herron  bought  the  Argentine  for  his  com- 
pany and  thereby  put  the  Tomboy  on  its  feet  again.  In 
his  negotiations  he  was  supported  by  his  directors,  and  the 
result  is  the  possession  of  a  mine  which  has  made  the  shares 
of  the  company  more  valuable  than  they  were  at  the  time 
of  its  organization.  Mr.  Herron  acted  for  the  directors, 
the  directors  acted  for  the  shareholders,  and  although 


"An  excellent  geological  report  on  this  district  has  been  pub- 
lished. "Preliminary  Report  on  the  Mining  Industries  of  the 
Telluride  Quadrangle,  Colorado,"  by  Chester  W.  Purington. 
United  States  Geological  Survey. 


SMUGGLER   UNION    MINES. 


50  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

the  transaction  was  a  large  one  the  shareholders  were 
debited  only  with  a  bonus  of  $10,000,  which  was  given  by 
the  company  to  the  mine  manager  in  recognition  of  his 
services.  It  is  an  incident  worthy  of  record  and  does 
honor  to  all  concerned.  If  managers  and  directors  of 
mining  companies  always  took  such  a  proper  view  of  their 
duties,  the  industry  of  mining  would  gain  hugely. 

On  the  8th  of  September  we  started  for  Silverton.  We 
took  the  recurrent  zig-zag  of  the  Bridal  Veil  trail,  and  in 
an  hour  reached  the  top  of  the  waterfall,  whose  filmy 
traceries  had  originated  the  name.  The  beauty  of  the 
waterfall  is  gone,  a  sacrifice  to  utilitarian  engineering, 
which  has  taken  the  water  to  supply  power  to  the  Smuggler- 
Union  mill.  The  pipe-line  climbs  to  the  place  where  once 
the  waterfall  flung  itself  into  space,  and  the  penstock  stands 
where  it  paused  for  breath  before  its  leap  into  the  sunlit 
ravine.  As  we  halted  at  the  head  of  the  trail,  the  San 
Miguel  valley  lay  outspread  with  panoramic  spaciousness. 

Nearly  horizontal  lines  of  differently  colored  rocks  in 
ordered  succession  gave  the  suggestion  of  long-continued 
natural  forces  building  up  the  superstructure  out  of  which 
the  sculpturing  hand  of  Time  had  chiseled  the  great  array 
of  mountain  peaks  which  rose  against  the  cloudless  skies. 
Emerson  has  said  somewhere  that  we  ought  to  "respect  the 
naturlangsamkeit  which  hardens  the  ruby  in  a  million 
years,  and  works  in  durations  in  which  Alps  and  Andes 
come  and  go  as  rainbows."  It  is  restful  to  contemplate 
this  patient  operation  of  natural  forces  in  contrast  to  the 
unresting  eagerness  of  man — a  nervous  energy  nowhere 
more  marked  than  among  the  mines  and  mills  which  lie 
under  the  shadows  of  these  very  mountains.  •  Such  con- 
templation should  conduce  to  equanimity.  I  think  it  does. 
The  records  of  the  geological  societies  show  that  geologists, 
as  a  rule,  live  long. 

Above  the  valley  rise  the  short  slopes  of  red  sandstones 
of  the  Trias,  surmounted  by  the  white  line  of  the  La  Plata 
sandstone  at  the  base  of  the  Jurassic,  and  above  this  dis- 
tinct stratum,  marked  by  a  medial  layer  of  dark  limestone, 


ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  51 

there  succeed  the  variegated  shales  and  sandstones  of  the 
McElmo  formation  at  the  top  of  the  Jurassic;  these,  be- 
ing fairly  soft,  have  a  gentle  slope,  partially  covered  by 
vegetation,  and  are  topped  with  the  gray  band  of  the  Da- 
kota sandstone,  at  the  base  of  the  Cretaceous.  All  these 
rocks  dip  down  the  valley  westward,  so  that  the  horizontal 
bedding  of  the  overlying  San  Miguel  conglomerate  brings 
out  the  unconformity  very  clearly.  This  Tertiary  con- 
glomerate has  a  dark-red  color,  as  seen  from  a  distance, 
and  it  belts  the  base  of  the  steep  cliffs  above  the  valley  with 
persistent  conspicuousness.  It  is  about  400  feet  thick  just 
below  Pandora,  and  is  covered  by  the  vast  succession  of 
volcanic  ejectamenta,  which  rise  tier  upon  tier  for  a  height 
of  3,500  feet,  culminating  in  serrated  peaks  which  soar 
far  above  the  uppermost  limits  of  vegetation. 

In  leaving  this  wonderful  geological  section  it  will  not  be 
unfitting  to  suggest  that  instructors  of  geology  in  our 
schools  of  mines  will  find  nowhere  on  the  globe  a  better 
locality  wherein  to  bring  home  to  the  student  the  relation 
between  geology  and  mining,  nor  will  they  find,  with  con- 
venience, a  district  which  illustrates  so  well  the  working 
and  the  results  of  natural  erosion,  the  operation  of  which 
Hutton  and  Lyell  emphasized  as  fundamental  among  the 
processes  of  geological  action. 

When  we  resumed  our  ride,  we  found  ourselves  on  a 
trail  threading  a  pine  forest.  In  sheltered  spots  the  wild 
flowers  of  summer  still  lingered,  and  the  trail  crossed  busy 
rivulets,  whose  voice  was  the  only  sound  disturbing  the 
quiet  of  regions  strangely  devoid  of  life.  Emerging  from 
the  pines,  we  found  ourselves  on  the  treeless  waste  above 
'timber  line/  and  followed  an  easy  ascent  along  the  bare, 
rounded  slopes  at  the  head  of  an  amphitheatre  of  ridges. 
It  was  a  lifeless  desolation,  bleak  and  still,  until  suddenly 
a  series  of  salutes  rang  out,  to  be  echoed  grandly  from 
peak  to  peak.  These  were  the  blasts  from  mine-workings 
which  we  had  not  seen ;  they  marked  the  noon  hour.  It  was 
time  for  "croust"  (literally  crust),  as  the  Cornish  miners 
call  the  meal  which  divides  their  working  time ;  so  we  off- 


ACROSS   THE   SAN    JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  53 

saddled  beside  the  first  stream  and  ate  our  luncheon  while 
the  horses  nibbled  the  scant,  dry  grass.  It  seemed  good 
to  be  there  under  that  serenely  blue  sky  and  amid  an  air 
that  made  "the  world  seem  young  and  life  an  epic." 
Those  who  do  not  know  the  exhilaration  of  these  high  alti- 
tudes have  not  realized  what  perfect  vitality  means.  On 
resuming  the  ascent,  we  were  soon  amid  loose  slopes  of 
debris,  over  which  the  horses  went  with  no  more  difficulty 
than  ourselves,  although  the  increased  rarity  of  the  air 
told  on  them  very  obviously.  The  trail  was  lost,  and  on 
choosing  the  lowest  ridge  to  the  south,  we  found  ourselves 
eventually  where  we  did  not  expect  to  be;  that  is,  over- 
looking the  little  mining  town  of  Ophir,  which  I  knew  to 
be  out  of  our  course  to  Silverton.  We  looked  from  a  razor- 
back  ridge  far  down  a  precipitously  steep  slope  into  a  dis- 
tant little  green  valley ;  a  white  road  marked  the  center  of 
it,  and  a  cluster  of  dwellings,  like  match-boxes,  seen  so  far, 
marked  the  settlement  of  Ophir.  This  is  not  Solomon's 
treasure-house,  but  as  the  slanting  sunlight  touched  the 
clusters  of  yellow  aspens  upon  the  lower  slopes  of  the  val- 
ley we  found  reason  enough  for  the  fitness  of  the  name. 

Retracing  our  steps  into  the  basin  from  which  the  ridge 
arose,  we  crossed  to  the  eastern  side,  and  finding  a  trail, 
ascended  a  crumbling  ridge,  from  which  we  could  see  the 
whole  complex  of  mountains  stretching  from  Red  Moun- 
tain to  Silverton  and  far  beyond.  We  were  13,200  feet 
above  sea  level.  It  did  not  take  long  to  regain  our  wind, 
and  shortly  the  four  of  us  were  picking  a  way  down  the 
further  side,  winding  in  and  out  of  those  semi-circular 
basins  which  are  so  characteristic  of  the  high  country  just 
above  the  timber  line.  It  was  wearisome  pulling  unwill- 
ing horses  over  talus  slopes,  so  we  soon  halted  for  a  breath- 
ing space  and  took  in  the  view.  An  amphitheater  of 
rugged  peaks  formed  our  background ;  tiers  built  up  of  suc- 
cessive extrusions  of  andesite  looked  out  upon  a  vast  life- 
less desolation  of  gray  summits  and  dun-colored  ranges, 
from  which  rose  three  flaming  peaks,  red  as  torches  to 
anarchy.  These,  the  Red  Mountains,  are  a  landmark 


54  ACROSS   THE   SAN    JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

throughout  the  region.  Their  color  is  due  to  the  solfataric 
action  of  thermal  waters  upon  the  iron  sulphides  dissemi- 
nated through  andesitic  rock.23  At  the  foot  of  these  iron- 
stained  ridges  are  situated  the  famous  Guston  and  Yankee 
Girl  mines,  which  were  so  prolific  about  fifteen  years  ago. 
The  origin  of  the  lodes  is  connected  with  that  of  the  pecu- 
liar red  summits,  in  that  both  are  traceable  to  the  activity 
of  acid  waters  which  have  precipitated  rich  silver  minerals 
on  the  one  hand,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  have  removed  the 
more  soluble  portions  of  the  andesite,  depositing  additional 
silica,  so  that  the  resulting  quartzose  country  has  withstood 
erosion  sufficiently  to  survive  in  the  form  of  red  summits, 
which  now  serve  as  beacons  to  the  prospector.24 

We  reached  Silverton  before  dark. 

Silverton  exhibited  a  condition  of  bustling  activity; 
the  country  tributary  to  it,  up  and  down  the  Animas  and 
along  its  numerous  tributary  streams,  has  recently  under- 
gone a  good  deal  of  that  new  development  which  is  essen- 
tial to  the  maintenance  of  production  in  a  mining  district. 
In  fact,  by  reason  of  the  energetic  development,  particu- 
larly of  gold  mines,  which  has  been  going  on  ever  since  the 
fall  in  the  price  of  silver  in  1893,  the  surrounding  region 
is  to-day  one  of  the  most  prosperous  mining  tracts  within 
the  Rocky  Mountain  area. 

The  mountains  around  Silverton  were  first  invaded  by 
the  pioneers  in  1871,  when  the  Little  Giant  vein  was  dis- 
covered by  Miles  T.  Johnson.  In  1872  an  arrastra  was 
put  up,  not  far  from  the  present  site  of  the  large  modern 
plant  of  the  Silver  Lake  mine.  At  that  time  the  nearest 
trading  station  was  at  Conejos,  in  the  San  Luis  valley. 
Until  1873  the  Indians  had  legal  control  over  the  region, 
but  this  was  ended  peaceably  by  the  Brunot  treaty. 


23  "Notes  on  Some  Colorado  Ore-Deposits,"  by  S.  F.  Emmons. 
Proceedings  Colorado  Scientific  Society,  Vol.  II.,  pp.  93-99. 

24  This    matter    has    been    much    discussed.     See    Theodore    B. 
Comstock,    "The    Geology    and    Vein- Structure    of    Southwestern 
Colorado."     Transactions    American    Institute    of    Mining    Engi- 
neers, Vol.  XV.,  pp.  252-264.     Also  S.  F.  Emmons,  Transactions 
American  Institute  of  Mining  Engineers,  Vol.  XVI.,  p.  809,  and 
T.  B.  Comstock,  Vol.  XVII.,  pp.  261-264. 


56  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

Early  on  the  morning  of  September  9  our  party  of  four 
rode  down  the  wide  main  street  en  route  for  the  Golden 
Fleece  mine,  near  Lake  City,  about  40  miles  distant.  Just 
outside  the  town  one  passes  the  entrance  to  Cement  creek. 
Here  there  is  a  new  pyritic  smelter  which  is  close  to  the  site 
of  the  old  Green  smelter,  erected  by  Judge  Green,  of 
Cedar  Eapids,  Iowa,  in  1874.  The  machinery  for  that  early 
metallurgical  establishment  came  on  burroback  from  Colo- 
rado Springs,  over  300  miles,  Colorado  Springs  being  at 
that  time  the  terminus  of  the  railway.  The  first  furnace 
was  made  of  sandstone  without  any  lining,  and  Mr.  John 
A.  Porter  has  told  me  of  the  advantages  and  disadvantages 
of  this  method  of  construction.  It  had  one  advantage: 
when  the  silicious  portion  of  the  charge  was  insufficient 
for  a  good  mixture  the  side  of  the  furnace  contributed  the 
silica  which  was  wanting!  In  1876  the  first  water-jacket 
used  in  Colorado  was  put  into  service  at  the  Green  smelter ; 
it  was  a  round  jacket  three  feet  in  diameter  and  was  made 
by  Eraser  &  Chalmers,  at  Chicago.  The  year  before,  1875, 
Mr.  Porter  had  put  in  a  siphon-tap,  suggested  by  his  ex- 
perience at  Eureka,  Nevada,  from  which  place  he  had 
come  to  Bilverton.  This  was  the  second  siphon-tap  em- 
ployed in  Colorado;  the  first  was  put  in  at  the  Swansea 
works,  near  Denver,  by  Ahrents.  Nothing  femains  of  the 
old  Green  smelter  save  a  cabin  with  a  brick  chimney,  which 
used  to  be  the  assay-office  of  the  establishment.  This  plant 
was  the  parent  of  the  San  Juan  Smelting  Works  at  Duran- 
go,  erected  in  1880,  and  contributed  an  important  share 
to  the  early  development  of  the  surrounding  region. 

Local  smelters  such  as  these  have  helped  the  exploration 
of  the  mountains.  In  riding  across  country,  as  we  were 
doing,  one  would  occasionally  see,  in  contrast  to  the  bright 
coloring  of  the  aspens,  a  black  patch  of  ground,  suggestive 
of  the  gloomy  gulf  down  which  Pluto  snatched  the  fair 
Persephone.  These  dark  patches  are  old  slag-dumps, 
which  have  crumbled  to  dust,  and  serve  as  reminders  of 
the  little  smelters  which  preceded  the  large  centralized  es- 
tablishments erected  in  later  vears  at  Pueblo  and  Denver. 


THE    SMUGGLER    UNION    TRAMWAY. 


58  ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

The  memory  of  these  early  efforts  has  crumbled  away,  like 
their  slags,  but  they  are  interesting  not  only  as  small  be- 
ginnings of  a  great  industry  but  on  account  of  their  human 
associations.  They  served  to  train  many  of  our  best  men. 
John  A.  Porter  has  been  mentioned  in  connection  with  the 
Green  smelter;  at  the  Rico  works,  first  built  under  the 
name  of  the  Grand  View  smelter,  in  1879,  such  men  as  F. 
M.  Endlich,  Ho f  man  and  Arnold  successively  got  experience 
and,  in  much  later  years,  W.  C.  Brace,  E.  J.  Wilson  and 
L.  D.  Godshall.  The  early  seventies  in  Colorado  saw  the 
beginning  of  many  reputations  which  are  now  well  estab- 
lished. Dr.  Edward  D.  Peters  is  said  to  have  been  a  great 
champion  of  the  reverberatory  in  those  days;  he  built  a 
smelter  at  Dudley,  at  the  foot  of  Mt.  Bross,  in  1872.  The 
ores  were  rich  in  silver  and  copper,  but  loaded  with  heavy 
spar,  so  that  although  he  began  with  only  a  calcining  and 
stone  blast-furnace,  36  by  42  inches  in  section,  with  water- 
cooled  tuyeres,  he  subsequently  added  a  reverberatory  fur- 
nace, having  a  9J  by  15  ft.  hearth,  which  was  fired  with 
epruce  wood.  The  ores  were  unfit  for  smelting  by  them- 
selves, but  the  smelter  was  operated  with  moderate  success 
for  two  years.  At  that  time  West  was  in  difficulties  with 
a  matte  blast-furnace  at  Black  Hawk,  and  Collom  was 
bucking  against  the  impossible  zinc-silver  ores  of  George- 
town at  a  little  smelter  just  below  Empire,  near  the  forks 
of  Clear  creek. 

Col.  William  L.  Chandler  was  at  Saints  John,  in  Sum- 
mit county,  just  over  the  continental  divide,  where  the 
ore  from  a  mine  at  Keystone  was  made  into  a  silicate  of 
lead  in  the  fusion-hearth  of  a  roasting  reverberatory  fur- 
nace. This  was  called  "matte"  and  was  treated  in  a  low 
shaft  furnace;  the  height  from  the  tuyeres  to  the  charg- 
ing door  being  5  ft.  This  stuff  was  sent  to  Empire,  where 
John  Collom  was  running  the  small  shaft-furnace  already 
mentioned.  The  treatment  was  a  failure  until  H.  A.  Ve- 
zin  took  charge  of  the  works  and  produced  good  silver- 
lead.  This  was  early  in  1872  and  was  the  first  lead  pro- 
duced on  a  commercial  scale  on  the  Atlantic  slope  of 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

Colorado.  In  1875  Anton  Eilers  took  charge 'at  Saints 
John,  but  left  in  a  short  time  in  order  to  join  Billings  at 
the  Germania  works  at  Sandy,  near  Salt  Lake  City.  He 
was  succeeded  at  Saints  John  by  Franz  Fohr,  who.  in  later 
years,  was  manager  of  the  Harrison  Keduction  Works  at 
Leadville. 

In  1874  Mather  &  Geist  established  their  works  at 
Pueblo  with  two  furnaces.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the 
Pueblo  Smelting  &  Refining  Company.  A  certain  Prof. 
Cheney  at  Animas  Forks  and  a  Prof.  Durier  at  Animas 
City  started  smelting  furnaces  in  localities  as  ill  situated 
for  fuel  as  for  ore — doomed,  therefore,  to  point  a  moral  and 
adorn  a  melancholy  tale. 

Richard  Pearce  had  his  first  experience,  in  Colorado,  in 
1873,  at  an  unsuccessful  smelter  erected  near  Empire,  on 
the  site  of  Collom's  old  works.  At  the  end  of  1873  this 
ill-fated  establishment  closed  and  Mr.  Pearce  moved  to 
Black  Hawk,  where  Prof.  N.  P.  Hill,  not  long  arrived  from 
Brown  University,  was  in  trouble  with  the  pyritic  ores  of 
Gilpin  county.  Pearce  and  Hill  joined  forces  and,  under 
the  advice  of  the  former,  an  addition  was  made  to  the  plant, 
whereby  it  became  possible  to  treat  the  matte,  which  up  to 
that  time  had  been  shipped  to  Vivian  &  Sons,  at  Swansea, 
Wales.  This  change  of  method  made  the  Black  Hawk 
smelter  a  financial  success,  and  led  finally,  in  1878,  to  the 
erection  of  the  large  plant  at  Argo,  near  Denver,  where, 
under  the  name  of  the  Boston  &  Colorado  Smelting  Com- 
pany, it  has  since  become  so  well  known. 

Jas.  B.  Grant  was  recently  graduated  from  Freiberg 
when,  in  1878,  he  built  a  small  one-stack  smelter  at  Lead- 
ville. Within  a  year  this  was  increased  to  eight  stacks; 
and  in  1880  Edward  Eddy  and  W.  H.  James,  who  owned 
sampling  works  at  Leadville,  joined  Mr.  Grant  in  his  smelt- 
ing venture.  That  pioneer  establishment  is  gone,  but  it 
was  the  parent  of  the  Omaha  &  Grant  Smelting  &  Refining 
Company.  Anton  Eilers  has  been  referred  to  already.  Ho 
was  at  the  Germania  plant  from  1876  to  1879;  in  the 


60  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

spring  of  1879  he  started  grading  for  the  Arkansas  Valley 
smelter,  which  was  blown  in  on  May  20  of  that  year. 

In  these  early  efforts  there  is  a  personal  equation  and  a 
human  interest  lacking  in  the  larger  undertakings  of  later 
days  because  they  represent  the  skill,  hopefulness  and  ener- 
gy of  individual  }Toung  men,  many  of  whom  have  proved 
to  be  masters  of  the  metallurgical  art.  While  it  must  be 
amusing  to  those  who  are  accustomed  to  the  more  patient 
progress  of  older  countries  to  read  of  a  period  within  the 
memory  of  active  men  as  being  "historical/'  yet,  as  time 
is  measured  in  a  rapidly  progressive  mining  region  like 
Colorado,  it  does  indeed  seem  long  ago.  "In  a  remote 
period  of  Western  history,  that  is  to  say,  30  years  since," 
is  a  sentence  not  without  a  touch  of  humorous  exaggera- 
tion to  a  European,  but  the  rapid  achievement  of  a  new 
country  outsteps  the  slow  beat  of  a  pendulum. 

As  we  rode  along  the  right  bank  of  the  Animas,  we 
passed  the  North  Star  mill,  where  John  J.  Crooke  em- 
ployed the  old  Augustin  process,  roasting  silver  ore  with 
salt  and  leaching  the  resulting  chloride  with  hot  water, 
finally  precipitating  the  silver  on  copper. 

Further  up  one  comes  upon  the  Stoiber  residence, 
"Waldheim,"  a  30-room  house,  with  all  modern  appoint- 
ments, built  by  the  former  owners  of  the  Silver  Lake  mine. 
Just  beyond,  in  Arrastra  basin,  one  can  see  the  Silver  Lake 
mill  and  the  tramway,  which  extends  in  swinging  lines  to 
the  mine  beside  the  lake  at  12,250  ft.  above  sea  level. 
One  of  the  spans  of  this  Bleichert  tram  clears  a  distance  of 
2,200  ft.  In  a  total  length  of  8,400  ft.,  the  upper  section 
of  the  tram  descends  2,100  ft.,  and  has  only  19  supporting 
towers.  The  lower  section — from  the  old  mill  to  the  new 
mill— is  6,200  ft.  long,  with  a  fall  of  659  ft.  The  tram 
from  the  Iowa  mine  climbs  the  neighboring  bluffs,  and  a 
little  further  up  the  Animas  the  North  Star  tram  reaches 
the  river  from  near  the  top  of  Sultan  Mountain,  a  height 
of  nearly  13,000  ft.,  making  a  descent  of  over  3,200  ft. 
Silverton  itself  is  situated  at  9,300  ft.  above  sea  level. 

The  North  Star  tram  is  2  1-3  miles  long,  and  connects 


IOWA   MINE   TRAM— Men   in   Bucket. 


62  ACROSS    THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

the  mill  on  the  right  bank  of  the  Animas  with  a  loading 
station  at  the  entrance  of  an  adit  at  12,900  ft.  above  sea 
level.  A  two-bucket  tramway,  having  a  single  span  of 
1,950  ft.,  carries  the  ore  to  two  large  storage-bins  situated 
in  a  gulch  604  ft.  lower  down.  Each  of  the  two  buckets 
carries  1,300  Ibs.  of  ore,  the  empty  one  being  pulled  up  by 


NORTH   STAR   TRAMWAY. 

the  descending  loaded  bucket.     The  carrying  cable  is  1J 
inch  in  diameter,  and  the  traction  rope,  1 J  inch. 

The  ore-bins,  just  described,  serve  as  the  terminal  of  a 
Dusedau  aerial  tramway  which  goes  to  the  mill,  two  miles 
down  the  mountain,  making  a  vertical  descent  of  2,600  ft. 
At  an  altitude  of  12,300  ft.  the  tram  crosses  a  mountain 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  (53 

lake  with  a  span  1,340  ft.  long,  and  lower  down  there  are 
other  spans  of  1,050  ft.  and  1,030  ft.  respectively.  At  the 
lower  end,  connecting  with  the  mill,  the  final  span  is  900 
ft.  long,  with  a  fall  of  380  ft.,  crossing  the  Animas  river 
at  a  height  of  150  ft.  above  the  water.  The  tension  station 
is  midway  between  the  mill  and  the  upper  terminal.  It 
is  said  that  the  gradient  of  the  installation  is  such  that 
30  h.p.  is  developed — but  this  power  is  not  utilized. 

The  buckets  or  cars  are  40  in  number,  and  each  carries 
600  Ibs. ;  they  are  placed  at  intervals  of  600  ft.,  and  travel 
at  a  speed  of  six  feet  per  second.  Fifty  towers  are  sta- 
tioned along  the  line,  the  highest  being  71  ft.  Two  miles 
of  steel  ropes  are  used  for  this  system,  the  total  weight 
of  them  being  over  30  tons. 

These  numerous  aerial  ropes,  spanning  the  intermoun- 
tain  spaces  like  great  spiders'  webs,  are  an  important  fea- 
ture of  mining  in  the  San  Juan  region.  We  had  already, 
on  the  previous  days  of  our  trip,  seen  the  tramways  of  the 
American  Nettie,  Bright  Diamond,  Grand  View,  Camp 
Bird,  Smuggler  Union,  Columbia,  Liberty  Bell  mines,  be- 
sides others,  the  names  of  which  we  did  not  know,  so  that 
with  the  group  of  three  just  referred  to,  near  Silverton, 
we  had,  in  the  aggregate,  observed  a  good  many  examples 
of  this  kind  of  mountain  engineering.  Most  of  the  recent 
installations  belong  to  the  Bleichert  and  Otto  systems,  in 
which  the  bucket  is  drawn  over  a  thick  stationary  cable  by 
means  of  a  smaller  traveling  rope.  The  traction  rope  is 
usually  from  J  to  f  inch  in  diameter,  while  the  fixed  cable 
is  from  1  to  1J  inches.  The  older  Huson  and  Hallidie  sys- 
tems, with  a  single  traveling  rope,  to  which  the  small  buck- 
ets are  attached,  are  nearly  obsolete  except  for  short  dis- 
tances and  over  easy  contours.  The  need  for  very  frequent 
supports,  the  consequent  less  substantial  construction,  and 
their  smaller  capacity  has  rendered  them  less  desirable  as 
a  means  of  transporting  ore  over  a  rugged  country.  Ex- 
perience now  favors  the  double  ropeway  system  in  spite 
of  a  cost  of  installation  which  is  30  to  50  per  cent  greater 
than  the  single  rope  type,  because  this  difference  in  first 


64  ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

cost  is  soon  wiped  out  by  the  cost  of  maintenance.,  which 
with  the  Hallidie  type  is  nearly  double  that  demanded  by 
the  Bleichert;  moreover,  in  the  matter  of  capacity,  it  may 
be  said  that  the  former  is  limited  to,  say,  75  tons  per  day 
of  10  hours,  while  the  substantial  construction  and  larger 
scale  of  the  latter  permits  of  a  capacity  that  ordinarily 
reaches  from  250  to  400  tons  per  day  of  10  hours. 

The  first  cost  of  a  tramway  of  this  kind  depends  upon 
the  contour  of  the  country  traversed,  and  the  distance 
from  the  manufacturer  who  supplies  the  material.  In  the 
high  altitudes  of  the  San  Juan,  say,  10,000  ft.  or  over,  the 
cost  of  material  for  an  installation  having  a  capacity  of  200 
tons  per  day  of  10  hours  would  be  about  $2.10  per  foot  of 
tram  line,  and  the  cost  of  freight,  plus  erection,  would  be 
about  $1.15  more,  so  that  the  total  cost  would  be  about 
$3.25  per  foot.  A  tramway,  one  mile  long,  having  the  ca- 
pacity mentioned,  would  entail  an  expenditure  of  about 
$20,000.  Actual  expenditure  for  tramways  in  this  district 
has  ranged  between  $2.50  and  $8  per  foot;  as  a  rule  the 
cheap  one  proves  the  most  expensive  on  account  of  the 
greater  cost  of  maintenance  and  repairs.  The  Camp  Bird 
tramway  is  8,550  ft.  long,  with  an  angle  station;  the  fall, 
in  the  length  mentioned,  is  1,840  ft.  and  the  cost,  all  told, 
was  $55,094.  It  is  a  thorough  piece  of  engineering  work. 
At  the  present  time,  it  is  worked  on  two  8-hour  shifts,  with 
a  duty  of  210  tons  per  diem.  The  operating  cost  is  17. 6c. 
and  the  maintenance  l|c.  per  ton.  A  large  amount  of  ma- 
terial is  sent  to  the  mine,  as  a  back  load,  and  the  cost  of 
handling  this  also  is  included  in  the  figures  just  quoted. 

The  spacing  of  the  supporting  towers  is  of  course  gov- 
erned by  the  contour  of  the  ground.  In  this  regard  the 
double  ropeway  systems,  with  their  independent  fixed  cable 
for  bucket-track,  permit  of  a  comparatively  more  direct 
path  and  more  uniform  movement  of  buckets,  because  the 
cable  can  be  stretched  to  a  high  tension,  diminishing  the 
deflection  in  the  swing  of  the  cable.  In  the  case  of  the 
single  ropeways,  which  both  carry  and  propel  the  bucket, 
as  a  high  tension  leads  to  overstraining  of  the  rope,  it  is 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  65 

avoided,  with  a  consequent  greater  dip  in  the  cable  and  the 
need  for  a  larger  number  of  supports — a  decided  draw- 
back in  a  rugged  mountain  country. 

The  automatic  feature  of  tramways  is  apt  to  be  exag- 
gerated. For  instance,  it  is  the  opinion  of  certain  capable 
managers  that  it  is  a  mistake  to  depend  too  much  upon 
gravitation,  and  that  auxiliary  steam-power  will  permit  of 
the  exercise  of  better  control  over  the  operation  of 
the  tram  and  a  consequent  possibility  of  running  it  at 
greater  speed.  There  is  no  doubt  that  an  engine  acts  as 
a  useful  governor,  while  the  attempts  to  harness  a  rock- 
breaker  to  a  tramway  having  excessive  gravitation  have 
failed,  because  a  rock-breaker  in  operation  is  essentially  a 
variable  machine  in  its  consumption  of  power.  On 
the  other  hand  an  air  compressor  has  not  this  bad  feature, 
and  if  a  tram  worked  against  an  air  receiver  it  would 
have  a  self-adjusting  governor  of  a  useful  kind.  Most  of 
the  breakages,  and  much  of  the  hard  wear  and  tear,  are  due 
to  variations  in  speed  and  bad  control  of  tram  lines  which 
have  a  difficult  contour  and  heavy  strains. 

In  this  connection  it  is  well  to  point  out  that  the  modern 
tram  owes  much  to  the  better  modes  of  attaching  the  bucket 
to  the  rope.  The  use  of  clips  or  lugs  permanently  fixed 
to  the  rope  and  employed  as  attachments  for  the  bucket 
was  found  to  develop  uneven  wear  in  the  cable,  and  this 
method  had  the  further  drawback  of  hindering  a  change 
in  the  spacing  of  the  buckets  whenever  wanted.  The 
modern  attachment  grips  the  rope  wherever  desired,  so  that 
the  bucket  is  hung  at  the  will  of  the  loader,  and  never  ex- 
actly at  the  same  spot.  One  of  the  most  popular  grips — 
to  be  seen  on  the  Camp  Bird,  Smuggler  Union  and  Silver 
Lake  trams — is  the  Weber,  an  illustration  of  which  is  given 
herewith.  "The  jaws  of  the  grip  are  operated  by  a  pe- 
culiar arrangement  of  toggle-jointed  and  self -locking  levers 
that,  when  properly  adjusted,  bite  the  grip  with  sufficient 
pressure  to  hold  securely  on  any  grade."25  There  is  no 

25  William  Hewitt.  Proceedings  of  The  Engineers'  Club  of  Phil- 
adelphia, October,  1902,  p.  300. 


66  ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

doubt  but  that  devices  like  these  do  prolong  the  life  of  a 
cable  by  distributing  the  wear  along  its  entire  length. 

We  continued  on  our  way  up  the  valley  of  the  Animas 
and  soon  passed  through  Howardsville,  which  figures 
largely  in  the  early  reports  made  by  R.  W.  Raymond,,  F.  M. 
Endlich,  and  other  government  officials  during  the  seven- 
ties. It  is  now  chiefly  populated  by  Mr.  Tom  Trippe. 
Close-by  is  Cunningham  gulch,  where  the  andesite-breccia 
of  the  San  Juan  formation  comes  down  to  the  Algonkian 
schists.  Several  mines,  such  as  the  Highland  Mary,  Ure- 
teba  and  Green  Mountain,  exhibit  this  contact  between 


WEBER   GRIP. 

Tertiary  and  pre-Cambrian  terrains.  The  best  ore  obtained 
from  the  lodes,  which  penetrate  both  formations,  is  said 
to  have  come  from  the  schist  just  below  the  breccia ;  this 
was  especially  the  case  with  the  Green  Mountain  vein  which 
had  a  large  ore-body  immediately  under  the  volcanics.  The 
next  tributary  valley  is  Maggie  gulch,  where  there  are 
several  young  mines,  one  of  which,  the  Ridgway,  is  of  im- 
portance.26 

The  Animas  valley  swings  around  to  the  north,  and  the 
road  brings  the  traveler  into  the  main  street  of  Eureka. 

26  Bulletin  No.  182,  U.  S.  Geological  Survey,  "A  Report  on  the 
Economic  Geology  of  the  Silverton  Quadrangle,  Colorado,"  by 
F.  L.  Ransome,  pp.  172-173. 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  67 

the  distributing  point  for  the  Sunnyside,  Mastodon,  Sil- 
ver Wing,  and  other  mines  which  have  proved  productive. 
Just  as  Tom  Trippe  occupies  Howardsville,  so  Rasmus 
Hansen  represents  Eureka.  These  are  among  the  very 
few  of  the  pioneers  who  are  still  actively  at  work — strong, 
brave  men,  who  have  crowded  the  romance  and  vicissitudes 
of  mining  into  their  own  lives;  men  with  an  indomitable 
pluck  and  a  tireless  activity  like  that  of  the  torrent  of 
the  Animas  which  rushes  past  their  cabin  doors — sweeping 
with  a  vagrant  energy  that  heeds  neither  the  gladness  of 
the  radiant  valley  nor  the  gloom  of  the  savage  gorge  until, 
after  many  wanderings,  it  abates  its  speed  and  hushes  its 
voice  in  the  still  waters  of  the  darkly  flowing  San  Juan. 

Beyond  Eureka  we  passed  the  Silver  Wing  and  the  Tom 
Moore  mines,  and  just  below  Animas  Forks  we  turned 
eastward  and  started  the  ascent  of  Cinnamon  pass.  This 
is  at  an  altitude  of  12,600  ft.  and  separates  the  watershed 
of  the  Animas  from  that  of  the  Lake  Fork  of  the  Gunnison 
river.  On  the  divide  is  the  Isolde  mine,  in  the  andesite- 
breccia,  also  the  Bon  Homme,  in  granite,  and  lower  down 
we  passed  the  tramway  being  constructed  for  the  Tabasco 
mine.  The  bright  glint  of  a  thick  copper  wire  bespoke  a 
line  of  electric  transmission  connecting  the  mine  and  mill 
with  a  power  station  situated  on  the  further  edge  of  Bur- 
roughs Park.  As  the  copper  wire  caught  the  sunlight 
one  could  not  but  be  reminded  of  the  aid  given  by  one 
metal  to  the  other;  the  electric  transmission  of  the  energy 
of  water  has  done  much  for  gold  mining  at  high  altitudes, 
where  fuel  for  steam-power  generation  entails  a  cost  which 
is  almost  prohibitive.  Several  very  successful  installations 
have  been  made  in  the  Silverton  district.  The  applica- 
tion of  this  form  of  engineering  was  limited  until  recent 
years.  So  long  as  the  direct  current  only  was  available 
the  transmission  of  power  by  electricity  had  severe  restric- 
tions, because  under  that  system  the  practical  limit  was  700 
volts,27  and  it  was  not  possible  to  augment  this  by  the  use 

27  Although  the  Virginius  mine  uses  900  volts.  This  plant  was 
erected  before  the  introduction  of  the  multiphase  alternating  cur- 


68  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

of  transformers.  Since  the  introduction  of  the  alternating 
current  these  limitations  have  been  swept  away,  and  the 
voltage  can  be  raised  to  a  degree  the  practical  limit  of 
which  is  dependent  upon  the  insulation  of  the  transform- 
ers. In  practice  the  voltage  is  usually  raised  so  that  the 
power  can  be  transmitted  over  a  wire  not  smaller  than 
No.  o,  because  that  size  gives  the  lowest  investment  in 
copper.  The  old  and  the  new  systems  of  electric  trans- 
mission can  be  compared  by  stating  that  an  alternating 
current  at  2,000  volts  would  require  only  one-sixteenth  of 
the  copper  that  would  be  required  by  the  same  current  at 
a  pressure  of  500  volts  transmitted  by  a  direct  current,  per 
horse-power,  per  given  distance  and  at  a  given  loss.  The 
cost  of  power,  as  sold  by  the  large  generating  companies  in 
the  mountains,  to, the  mines  at  timber  line  or  near  it, 
averages  about  $.8  per  horse-power  per  month. 

The  advantage  of  electric  transmission  of  power  in  place 
of  the  painful  transport  of  fuel  to  the  mines  above  timber 
line  can  be  gauged  by  a  look  at  the  trails  which  frequently 
afford  the  only  means  of  communication  between  the  valleys 
and  the  mines.  This  is  well  illustrated  in  the  accompany- 
ing photograph28  of  a  trail  to  one  of  the  Silver  Lake  group 
of  mines. 

The  Silver  Lake  installation  was  the  first  multiphase 
plant  in  the  San  Juan  region.  It  was  installed  eight 
years  ago,  and  operates  a  great  variety  of  machinery,  such 
as  drills,  pumps,  hoists,  blowers,  machine  shop,  etc.  The 
line  is  three  miles  long.  A  compound  condensing  engine 
has  replaced  water-power  because  the  generating  station  is 
on  the  railroad,  so  that  coal  can  be  delivered  cheaply  (it 
comes  from  near  Durango),  while  the  water-power  avail- 
able was  both  insufficient  and  precarious  on  account  of  the 
damage  to  the  long  flume,  brought  about  by  rockslides, 
snowslides  and  the  other  difficulties  of  a  high  altitude  sub- 
jected to  violent  extremes  of  heat  and  cold. 


rent,  and  the  high  cost  for  copper  wire  over  a  four-mile  line 
prompted  the  adoption  of  this  unusually  high  pressure  for  a  di- 
rect current. 

28  Trans.  A.  I.  M.  E.,  Vol.  XXVI.,  p.  423. 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 


69 


Below  the  Tabasco  mill  we  met  a  wagon  heavily  loaded 
with  bed-plates,  for  an  engine,  bearing  the  name  of  the 
Colorado  Iron  Works ;  and  soon  afterward,  riding  through 
a  belt  of  pines,  we  found  ourselves  in  the  open  valley  of 
Burroughs  Park.  This  district  has  been,  during  the  past 
two  years,  the  scene  of  active  prospecting  and  some  min- 
ing. We  dismounted  and  partook  of  hospitalities  tendered 


SILVER   LAKE    TRAIL. 

by  Mr.  George  Peirce,  who  subsequently  piloted  us  to  the 
Cleveland  group  of  veins.  These  are  not  as  yet  of  eco- 
nomic importance,  but  they  have  characteristics  which  are 
interesting  from  a  scientific  point  of  view.  They  pene- 
trate granite ;  the  Monticello  vein,  which  I  saw,  was  about 
one  foot  thick;  for  the  first  15  ft.  in  depth  the  vein 
consisted  of  cellular  quartz  marked  by  copper  stains,  but 


70  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

otherwise  it  was  said  to  be  barren;  lower  down  it  became 
metal-bearing,  and  at  about  45  ft.  deep  I  found  a  piece  of 
copper  pyrite  coated  with  a  gray  film  of  chalcocite,  suggest- 
ive of  secondary  enrichment  and  reminding  me  of  cer- 
tain experiments  made  by  Mr.  H.  V.  Winchell  at  Butte. 
in  the  course  of  which  the  copper  of  a  slightly  acid  solution 


BURROUGHS  PARK,  COLO. 

of  copper  sulphate,  containing  also  some  free  sulphurous 
anhydride  (S02),  was  found  after  a  time  to  have  precipi- 
tated a  film  of  gray  copper  sulphide  upon  the  bright  facets 
of  crystals  of  copper  pyrite.29 

™  These  experiments  have  been  described  in  detail  lately.  "The 
Synthesis  of  Chalcocite,"  by  H.  V.  Winchell,  Engineering  and 
Mining  Journal,  May  23,  1903. 


72  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

In  the  afternoon  we  left  this  locality  and  rode  down 
Burroughs  Park  and  along  the  Lake  Fork  of  the  Gunnison 
until,  in  the  evening,  we  pulled  up  at  the  Golden  Fleece 
mine,  beside  Lake  San  Cristobal.     The  road  at  first  goes 
over  granite  covered  with  an  occasional  patch  of  andesite- 
breccia,  such  as  the  one  in  which  the  Champion  mine  is 
situated.     Then  it  cuts  into  the  Algonkian  schists  and 
quartzites.     Just  before  reaching  the  lake  the  road  and 
stream  follow  close  to  the  contact  between  upturned  schist 
and  the  overlying  andesite-breccia.    Near  the  lake,  decom- 
posed andesite-breccia  becomes  the  prevailing  formation. 
The  road  follows  the  contour  line  of  the  lake  shore  and 
afforded  us  a  glorious  canter  in  and  out  among  scattered 
young  pines ;  there  came  glimpses  of  placid  water  reflecting 
the   resplendent   coloring  of   the   aspens   which   clustered 
upon  the  encircling  hillslopes,  and  the  bright  warm  tints 
of  clouds  which  caught  the  sunset  glow.     Suddenly,   in 
turning  a  corner,  the  road  ran  amid  a  group  of  cabins  and 
other  buildings,  the  busy  aspect  of  which  told  us  we  were 
at  our  destination,  the  Golden  Fleece  mine. 

In  the  summer  of  1896  the  Golden  Fleece  mine  shipped 
nine  carloads  of  ore,  weighing  about  ten  tons  each,  the 
poorest  of  which  netted  $33,000  and  the  richest  $49,500. 
In  a  few  months  the  bonanza  yielded  $1,600,000.  This 
rich  ore  was  characterized  by  petzite  (Au  25  per  cent, 
Ag  41  per  cent,  Te  34  per  cent)  and  ruby  silver  (proust- 
ite)  scattered  through  a  dark  chalcedonic  quartz  or  horn- 
stone. 

The  story  of  this  mine  exhibits  the  uncertainties  of  dig- 
ging for  gold.  In  1874  Captain  Enos  T.  Hotchkiss,  con- 
nected with  a  government  surveying  party  which  was  lay- 
ing out  a  toll-road  from  Saguache  to  Lake  City,  caught 
sight  of  the  outcrop,  standing  conspicuously  above  the  hill- 
slope,  and  examined  it.  He  located  it  as  the  "Hotchkiss'7 
mine,  and  had  some  assessment  work  done  while  he  was  en- 
gaged in  his  survey-work  in  the  vicinity.  As  far  as  is 
known,  he  found  no  ore.  A  year  later,  when  Hotchkiss 
had  abandoned  his  claim,  it  was  re-located  by  George  Wil- 


74  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

son  and  Chris  Johnson,  under  the  name  of  "The  Golden 
Fleece."  They  began  what  is  now  known  as  the  No.  1 
tunnel,  but  finding  only  little  stringers  of  rich  ore  they 
ceased  work.  Others  did  similar  desultory  prospecting. 
0.  P.  Posey  found  a  very  rich  bunch  of  ore  in  the  croppings 
above  the  No.  1  tunnel  and  took  out  several  hundred 
pounds,  which  were  packed  to  Del  Norte  and  sent  thence 
to  the  Pueblo  smelter.  Then  John  J.  Crooke  took  a  lease 
and  bond;  he  also  extracted  about  $30,000  from  the  out- 
crop above  No.  1  tunnel,  which  had  been  extended  a  little 
further,  without  result.  This  was  between  1876  and  1878. 
In  1889  Charles  Davis  took  a  lease  and  bond ;  he  did  a  good 
deal  of  work  along  the  high  croppings,  and  finally  sunk  a 
shaft  30  ft.  deep,  which  struck  a  body  of  ore  yielding  $40,- 
000  in  a  very  short  time.  Late  in  that  year,  1889,  George 
W.  Peirce  bought  the  mine  for  $50,000,  and  commenced 
extensive  explorations.  He  found  out  very  soon,  indeed, 
that  Davis  had  extracted  all  the  ore  in  sight,  and  the  out- 
look was  not  cheerful.  All  the  work  up  to  this  time  had 
been  to  the  north,  on  the  supposition  that  the  vein  had  been 
faulted  in  that  direction.  The  new  owners  cross-cut  south 
at  the  No.  2  tunnel,  which  had  been  previously  extended  a 
little  way,  but  had  found  nothing.  The  vein  was  picked 
up,  but  not  much  ore  was  encountered  at  first.  They  per- 
sisted, however,  and  within  a  year  rich  ore  was  cut  on  No. 
2,  and  it  was  traced  upward  until  it  became  easy  to  inter- 
cept the  same  body  at  No.  1.  It  was  discovered  that  the 
former  owners  had  been  within  ten  feet  of  the  main  ore- 
body  of  the  mine,  which  from  that  time,  and  until  1897, 
was  very  profitable. 

The  Golden  Fleece  vein  strikes  east  and  west,  approxi- 
mately; it  dips  southward  at  the  rate  of  33  ft.  in  380  ft. 
In  depth  it  flattens,  so  that  the  hade  for  the  lower  work- 
ings is  only  150  ft.  in  1,120  ft.  In  the  accompanying 
drawing,  Fig.  8,  the  upper  workings  and  the  geological 
conditions  are  both  represented.  The  vein  penetrates  fine- 
grained breccia  and  tuffs,  of  the  San  Juan  formation,  until 
it  runs  abruptly  into  a  very  coarse  breccia,  where  it  scatters 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  75 

out  and  ends.  The  coarse  breccia  lies  on  the  top  of  the 
finer  series  at  an  angle  of  28° ;  the  difference  in  the  rate  of 
erosion  renders  the  change  of  rock  very  easy  to  recognize 
at  surface,  even  if  the  abrupt  cessation  of  the  conspicuous 
outcrop  did  not  incite  close  observation.  The  outcrop 
makes  a  comb,  as  much  as  fifty  feet  in  height,  of  hard 
sintery  quartz  which,  on  examination,  is  readily  seen  to  be 
a  decomposed  and  silicified  breccia,  exhibiting  various  de- 
grees of  silicification  from  the  vein  itself,  which  is  almost 
entirely  quartz,  to  the  outer  v  country,  in  which 
the  original  structure  is  but  slightly  obscured.  In  this 
outcrop  there  have  been — and  still  are — found  irregular 
patches  of  extremely  rich  ore.  In  the  underground  work- 
ings it  can  be  seen  that  the  vein  itself  follows  a  line  of  frac- 
ture and  brecciation ;  the  twice  brecciated  country  has  been 
re-cemented  with  silicious  waters,  so  as  to  form  a  "vuggy" 
or  cellular  veinstone.  Pieces  of  country  are  to  be  seen 
inclosed  within  a  coating  of  quartz.  The  sheeting  of  the 
rock  explains  the  multiplicity  of  walls  and  ore-seams  which 
confused  those  who  have  at  various  times  exploited  this 
vein. 

The  outcrop  ceases  when  the  vein  encounters  the  coarse 
breccia;  so,  also,  in  the  underground  workings  the  vein 
itself  comes  to  an  end  with  a  suddenness  which  is,  however, 
only  comparative.  The  contact  (A  B)  has  been  considered 
a  fault ;  a  good  deal  has  been  said  concerning  its  regularity 
and  clean-cut  character.  This,  however,  does  not,  I  believe, 
accord  with  the  facts.  The  so-called  "fault"  is  not  a 
break  or  dislocation  in  the  rocks;  it  merely  marks  the 
division  between  the  layers  of  fine-grained  breccia  and  an 
overlying  formation  of  very  coarse  breccia;  there  is  no 
smooth  plane  or  wall  or  defined  parting  between  these 
two  formations,  but  only  a  sudden  transition  which,  at  a 
distance  is  more  marked  than  near-by. 

The  ore-body  of  the  mine  was  found  in  a  triangular 
block  of  ground  bounded  on  the  one  side  by  this  "contact," 
A  B,  on  the  other  by  the  hillside,  B  D,  and  along  the  base 
by  the  No.  3  tunnel,  A  D.  The  outcrop  was  patchy  and 


76  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

impoverished  by  leaching,  the  evidence  of  which  is  marked. 
This  robbing  of  the  croppings  probably  enriched  the  vein  a 
little  lower  down.  A  branch  vein,  called  the  lima,  which 
comes  in  from  the  northeast,  appears  to  have  played  a  part 
in  determining  the  eastern  or  outer  limits  of  the  ore-body. 

Speculation  concerning  the  causes  which  determined 
this  occurrence  of  rich  ore  is  not  hampered  by  too  many 
facts.  A  correct  explanation  suffers  from  the  lack  of 
them.  The  contact  existed  before  the  vein  was  formed. 
The  fracture,  followed  by  the  ore,  passed  easily  through  the 
finer-grained  rock,  but  ceased  abruptly  when  it  met  the 
beds  of  coarse  breccia,  because  the  force  of  fracturing  was 
not  only  insufficient  to  overcome  the  resistance  of  the 
harder  fragments  contained  in  the  latter,  but  it  must  have 
been  dissipated  by  the  encounter  with  a  loose-textured 
body  of  rock,  much  in  the  way  that  the  power  of  a  diamond 
drill  becomes  wasted  in  passing  into  a  shifting  mass  of 
loose  conglomerate.  As  a  consequence,  the  energy  of  shat- 
tering was  diverted  along  the  contact,  the  vein  fracture 
ceased  and  the  later  ore-depositing  waters  were  barred 
from  further  advance  into  the  coarse  breccia,  save  as  a 
scattering  confined  to  the  neighborhood  of  the  contact. 
At  the  third  level  the  ore-body,  occurring  in  the  fine- 
grained country,  was  notably  wider  immediately  at  the 
"contact/'  and  in  examining  the  outcrop  of  the  vein  I  no- 
ticed that  it  was  difficult  to  decide  upon  the  exact  line  of 
separation  between  the  two  formations,  because  the  mineral- 
ization extended  from  the  fine  into  the  coarse  breccia  so  as 
to  obscure  the  divisional  plane. 

The  deeper  levels  have  found  some  small  bodies  of  ore, 
and  a  good  deal  of  money  has  been  obtained  from  isolated 
bunches  all  the  way  down  to  the  main  tunnel  or  adit, 
about  700  ft.  below  the  third  level.  Several  larger  bodies 
of  low-grade  ore  have  also  been  encountered  in  the  deeper 
workings.  Exploratory  work  is  still  going  on,  especially 
near  the  contact,  where  the  chances  for  finding  more  ore 
seem  to  be  reasonably  good. 

Most  of  the  rich  ore  of  the  Golden  Fleece  mine  was 


ACROSS   THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  77 

shipped  to  the  smelters,  but  the  low-grade  mill-stuff  was 
treated  on  the  spot.  As  the  values  were  chiefly  contained 
in  telluride  minerals  (principally  petzite,  but  also  some 
hessite)  the  treatment — by  concentration — presents  feat- 
ures of  interest.  The  mill  was  of  latest  design,  erected  by 
Stearns,  Roger  &  Co.  It  consisted  of  rolls  for  crushing, 
Huntington  mills  for  re-grinding,  Wilfley  tables  for  con- 
centration and  a  canvas  plant  for  slimes.  No  use  was 
made  of  amalgamation.  The  Huntingtons  were  provided 
with  screens  of  30-mesh,  and  experience  showed  later  that 
20-mesh  would  have  been  better.  In  treating  18,000  tons 
having  an  average  assay  value  of  $10.25,  half  of  which 
was  in  gold  and  half  in  silver,  the  extraction  averaged  be- 
tween 45  and  60  per  cent ;  63  per  cent  was  the  best  result. 
The  concentrates  contained  55  to  65  oz.  of  silver,  1  to  3  oz. 
gold  and  12  to  18  per  cent  lead,  in  the  form  of  galena. 
The  concentration  was  in  the  ratio  of  12  to  1.  It  may  be 
said  that  the  experience  with  this  ore  indicated  conclusively 
that  a  simple  mill,30  with  Wilfley  tables  and  an  extended 
canvas  plant  as  the  principal  features,  would  have  been 
adequate. 

We  remained  for  two  whole  days  with  Mr.  Peirce, 
and  early  on  the  12th  of  September  our  journey  was  re- 
sumed. In  crossing  the  valley  of  the  Lake  Fork  of  the 
Gunnison  one  cannot  help  noting  the  peculiarities  of  the 
surface.  The  eastern  range,  opposite  the  mine,  is  marked 
by  a  depression  known  as  Slumgullion  gulch.  As  seen 
from  No.  3  tunnel  it  looks  like  a  big  landslide,  the  steep 
slopes  of  which  have  been  obscured  by  weathering.  How- 
ever caused,  it  has  extended  down  to  the  valley  and 
dammed  the  stream  so  as  to  form  Lake  San  Cristobal. 
It  is  said,  by  those  living  on  the  lake  shore,  to  be  still  in 
motion  and  to  be  extending  further  across  the  valley. 
Slumgullion  is  commonly  imputed  to  glacial  action,  but 
the  observed  facts  do  not  require  us  to  go  so  far  afield. 


30  The  mill  was  really  designed  for  an  ore  containing  galena 
and  iron  pyrite.  both  of  which  proved  unimportant  ingredients 
when  the  mine  became  further  developed. 


78  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

Landslides,  some  of  them  of  great  extent,  dating  back  to 
early  Pleistocene  time,  have  been  recognized  and  carefully 
studied  in  the  Telluride  and  Rico  regions.  They  are  at- 
tributed to  the  penetration  of  water  along  bedding-planes 
and  other  lines  of  parting.  In  the  case  of  Slumgullion  the 
porosity  of  the  coarse  layers  of  breccia  permitted  of  the 
entrance  of  water,  which  would  reach  down  until  a  less 
porous  stratum  was  encountered  and  then,  if  the  dip-slope 
was  toward  the  valley,  the  conditions  would  be  ripe  for  a 
landslide.  The  geological  conditions  observed  in  the 
Golden  Fleece  mine  would  favor  such  movement  if  the 
bedding-planes  dipped  with  the  hillside;  they  dip  right 
into  the  hill,  however,  and  as  a  consequence  the  surface 
slopes  steeply,  at  30  degrees  and  over.  The  same  geological 
structure  if  carried  across  to  the  oilier  side  of  the  valley 
would  explain  the  landslide  of  Slumgullion.  In  the  earlier 
history  of  these  mountains  they  were  bolder  than  they  are 
now,  and  when,  at  the  close  of  volcanic  activity,  earth- 
quakes supervened,  then  the  landslides  occurred  on  a 
colossal  scale  and  were  accompanied  by  a  shattering  of  the 
rocks,  covering  areas  extending  over  many  square  miles. 

The  ascent  of  Slumgullion  was  easier  than  it  sounds, 
and  as  we  filed  along  we  were  reminded  by  the  mention  of 
the  Cannibal  plateau,  which  arose  in  bleak  ruggedness  to 
our  left,  of  a  tragedy  the  details  of  which  no  human  wit- 
ness has  truthfully  told.  In  1873  a  party  of  prospectors, 
intending  to  go  to  Fort  Garland,  in  the  San  Luis  valley, 
found  their  way  up  the  river  which  we  had  left.  It  was 
a  very  severe  winter,  so  that  game  was  scarce;  they  were 
verging  on  starvation,  and  on  their  last  legs.  Out  of  the 
five  men,  one,  named  Parker,  survived ;  he  claimed  that  he 
went  out  into  the  woods  hunting  and  on  his  return  one 
of  his  comrades,  rendered  mad  by  hunger,  attacked  him 
with  an  axe,  so  that  he  had  to  shoot  him  in  self-defense. 
Then  the  other  three  set  on  him,  so  that  he  had  to  kill 
them  also.  It  is  generally  believed  that  Parker  killed 
them  to  get  the  money  they  are  understood  to  have  carried. 
Game  was  not  so  scarce  as  he  represented ;  at  all  events  he 


BURRO  TRAIN-  CROSSING  A  ROCK-SLIDE. 


80  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

managed  to  support  himself  until  he  worked  his  way  out, 
and  finally  reached  Durango,  where  he  was  subsequently 
arrested,  convicted  and  sentenced  to  life  imprisonment. 
Two  years  ago  he  was  liberated  by  the  then  Governor  of 
the  State.  In  his  gruesome  story  he  confessed  to  having 
been  compelled  by  hunger  to  eat  portions  of  his  victims ; 
hence  the  ominous  name,  which,  like  the  gloomy  brow  of 
the  Cannibal  plateau  itself,  overshadows  the  fair  valley  of 
San  Cristobal. 

At  the  top  of  Slumgullion  gulch  the  road  turns  east- 
ward to  Creede;  we  turned  northward  and,  picking  up  a 
trail  which  plunged  into  a  pine  forest,  we  eventually  found 
ourselves  at  the  headwaters  of  the  Cebolla  and  followed  it 
down.  We  were  soon  on  a  well-beaten  path— the  old  Ute 
trail,  used  by  the  Indians  in  their  migrations  across  the 
Gunnison  country.  They  are  gone  from  these  hills  and 
huddled  on  the  reservation;  so  also  the  game  which  they 
hunted;  that  too  has  been  driven  away  by  the  restless 
prospector.  As  we  rode  along  in  single  file  there  was  no 
sign  of  living  thing  for  hours  of  travel;  we  followed  the 
Cebolla,  fringed  with  willows  and  threading  narrow  valleys 
overshadowed  by  cliffs  of  architectural  aspect,  battlemented 
masses  and  monumental  pillars,  like  Egyptian  pilons, 
among  which  a  babbling  trout-stream  took  its  quiet  way. 
The  mountain  flanks  appeared  to  be  built  of  rhyolite  and 
rhyolite  breccia.  Occasional  fragments  of  obsidian  were 
found.  Later  we  were  in  a  granite  country. 

While  picking  our  way  over  the  talus  at  the  foot  of  high 
cliffs  and  noting  the  general  air  of  destruction  which  had 
characterized  much  of  the  rock  structure  seen  during  this 
particular  morning's  ride,  it  was  impressed  upon  the  ob- 
server that  frost  action  was  very  apparent.  To  most  people 
who  travel  among  mountains,  and  even  to  those  who  live 
at  their  feet,  it  is  often  a  wonder  how  the  rocks  are  broken, 
and  when.  Anyone  who  sleeps  outdoors  will  note  the  fall 
of  rock-fragments  during  the  night,  and  to  this  fact,  I 
think,  is  due  the  general  immunity  from  such  danger.  The 
patient  leverage  of  the  frost  is  the  chief  agent  in  disin- 


ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  81 

tegrating  the  rocks,  for,  the  maximum  density  of  water 
being  at  4°  C.  or  39°  F.,  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  na- 
ture's silent  forces  is  set  to  work  upon  the  water,  which, 
having  sought  out  the  cracks  and  crannies  of  the  rocks, 
is  in  the  act  of  expanding.  By  day  the  temperature  in  the 
high  mountain  country  is  raised  by  reason  of  the  penetra- 
tion of  sunlight  through  the  clear  atmosphere,  but  at  the 
approach  of  night  there  is  a  sudden  cold,  which  is  succeeded 
next  day  by  another  relaxation.  During  these  variations 
of  temperature  the  moisture  in  the  rock-cleavages  under- 
goes an  alternation  of  contraction  and  expansion  which 
serves  as  an  intensely  powerful  agent  of  disintegration. 

At  noon  we  pulled  up  at  a  spot  marked  in  large  letters 
on  the  map  as  "Cathedral"  and  found  a  solitary  log  cabin 
with  a  hospitable  woman  in  command,  who  gave  us  dinner. 
Subsequently,  when  smoking  a  soothing  pipe,  we  could  ap- 
preciate the  simple  grandeur  of  the  granite  forms,  sculp- 
tured by  Time  and  chiseled  by  the  heat  of  day  and  the  frost 
of  night  into  buttresses  and  pinnacles  simulating  all  the 
stern  magnificence  of  a  Gothic  ruin — of  a  cathedral  not 
made  with  hands,  domed  by  the  sky  and  aisled  with  the 
green  of  the  peaceful  valley. 

All  of  the  succeeding  afternoon  was  spent  in  a  comfort- 
able ride  down  the  expanding  valley  of  the  Cebolla,  which 
now  began  to  exhibit  cultivation,  until,  with  a  long  gallop 
through  the  cool  air  of  the  twilight,  we  reached  the  Hot 
Springs.  Here  we  put  up  overnight.  From  a  distance 
the  patches  of  white  incrustation  and  clouds  of  steam  told 
us  of  our  approach  to  this  scene  of  thermal  activity.  The 
links  between  vein-formation  and  hot  springs  which  are 
to  be  seen  throughout  this  region  are  not  lacking  in  sug- 
gestion. The  mining  districts  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
are  rich  in  hot  springs.  In  Colorado  there  are  Hot  Sul- 
phur, Idaho  Springs,  Manitou,  Canon  City,  Glenwood, 
Poncha,  Wagon  Wheel  Gap,  Pagosa,  Trimble  Springs, 
Ouray  and  others  of  less  importance.  Similar  conditions 
obtain  in  the  States  of  Idaho,  Montana,  Utah,  etc.  The 
occurrence  of  these  thermal  springs,  rich  in  alkaline  and 


82  ACROSS   THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

other  salts,  in  the  midst  of  a  very  productive  mineral  re- 
gion, is  not  without  significance.  Apart  from  their  scien- 
tific aspect,  the  hot  springs  play  a  useful  part  in  the 
economy  of  man.  They  are  the  resort  of  people  troubled 
with  ailments  requiring  rest  and  change  of  food;  to  the 
miners,  who  come  to  them  with  rheumatism,  indigestion, 
alcoholism  and  similar  troubles,  they  are  beneficial,  chiefly 
by  reason  of  the  opportunities  for  cleanliness,  abstinence 
and  a  simple  diet — the  last,  to  my  mind,  the  especial  boon 
of  the  thermal  spring  resort,  because  the  miner  lives  in  a 
world  of  sin  and  canned  vegetables  from  which  "ranch 
food"  and  early  hours  of  sleep  will  rescue  him,  bringing 
his  inner  man  to  a  condition  of  normal  healthiness. 

Next  morning,  September  13,  we  turned  eastward  from 
the  Cebolla  valley  and  struck  across  country  for  Vulcan. 
At  the  foot  of  a  high  ridge  we  passed  the  Old  Lot  mine, 
cheerfully  active.  The  dump  indicated  a  vein  carrying  two 
or  three  feet  of  dark  quartz  streaked  with  galena.  Close 
to  the  latter  occasional  spots  of  native  gold  could  be  seen — 
a  handsome-looking  ore.  On  the  top  of  the  ridge  there 
was  afforded  an  extensive  view  of  the  Gunnison  plateau, 
bounded  to  the  north  by  the  deep  gorge  through  which 
the  swift  Gunnison  rushes,  and  to  the  south  by  the  bold 
outlines  of  the  San  Juan  mountains.  Looking  eastward 
the  outlying  summits  of  the  Cochetopa  hills  broke  the 
sky-line,  but  westward  the  sage-clad  ridges  stretched  in 
sober  gray  until  they  faded  into  the  blue  of  farthest  dis- 
tance. Though  tame  as  compared  to  the  grandly  pictur- 
esque mountain-land  from  which  we  had  just  emerged, 
this  plateau  yielded  a  pleasure  of  its  own  in  the  glorious  spa- 
ciousness and  atmospheric  radiance  of  a  boundless  horizon. 

This  billowy  succession  of  rounded  hills  is  built  up  of 
Archean  granite  and  Algonkian  schists.  We  saw  several 
outcrops  of  the  latter,  especially  in  the  Vulcan  district. 
Flows  of  Tertiary  lava  and  layers  of  breccia  form  occasional 
flat-topped  ridges  with  broken  edges  and  tumbled  talus 
slopes.  The  occurrence  of  an  area  of  schist  is  an  interest- 
ing feature,  because  while  there  are  other  stretches  of  these 


8-i  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

rocks,  represented  by  the  actinolite  schists  of  the  Arkansas 
valley  and  the  hornblende  schists  of  the  western  slope  of 
the  Sangre  de  Cristo,  this  particular  rock  is  unusual  to 
the  mining  regions  of  Colorado,  and-  is  not  regarded  as  a 
favorable  terrain  for  precious-metal  mining,  a  fact  which 
is  in  striking  contrast  to  California,  South  Dakota  and 
other  very  productive  regions. 

On  arrival  at  Vulcan  we  proceeded  at  once  to  the  Good 
Hope  mine,  owned  by  Dr.  Loui  Weiss  and  others,  who  in- 
vited us  most  cordially  to  see  the  workings.  This  we  did 
very  gladly  because  the  mine  was  well  known  as  having 
been  the  source  of  the  handsome  specimens  of  native  telluri- 
um, which  are  to  be  found  in  many  mineral  collections; 
furthermore,  I  had  heard  of  several  peculiarities  of  lode- 
structure  which  aroused  curiosity. 

The  Good  Hope  vein  penetrates  a  greenish-gray  sericite 
or  hydrous  mica  schist,  which  has  the  greasy  feel  and  fine 
texture  characteristic  of  that  rock.  It  forms  part  of  the 
Algonkian  series  of  crystalline  schists  which  overlie  the 
Archean  granite  of  the  Gunnison '  plateau.  The  vein  has 
an  approximately  east  and  west  strike;  it  dips  northward, 
the  hade  being  40  ft.  in  500  ft.  At  surface  the  vein  has 
an  outcrop  of  heavy  iron  sinter  which  eventually  gives  place 
underground  to  a  band  of  country  thickly  impregnated 
with  iron  pyrite.  The  walls  of  the  vein  are  smooth  and 
soft,  both  features  being  due  to  a  parallelism  with  the 
schistosity  of  the  enclosing  country.  No  selvage  or  casing 
was  noticed,  but  the  lode-matter  breaks  rather  readily  away 
from  the  country  on  account  of  a  blocky  jointing,  which, 
added  to  the  fissile  character  of  the  rock  itself,  makes  min- 
ing operations  dangerous  unless  the  timbering  is  well 
attended  to.  The  rich  ore  is  associated  with  streaks  and 
lenses  of  iron-stained  schist  traversed  by  stringers  of  quartz. 
Native  tellurium  is  frequently  present,  but  the  mineral 
which  carries  the  gold  has  not  been  detected  with  certainty. 
I  found  some  spots  of  petzite,  and  it  is  likely  that  this  is 
one  of  the  enriching  minerals. 

The  accompanying  sketch  (Fig.  9)  of  the  lode,  as  seen 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 


85 


at  the  fifth  level,  will  illustrate  its  structure.  From  A  to 
B  is  the  main  pay-streak.  On  the  hanging  wall  there  are 
3  to  5  inches  of  quartz,  usually  iron-stained ;  then  comes  a 
bleached  decomposed  schist  carrying  a  little  quartz  through- 
out. It  is  this  white  silky  schist  which  usually  carries 
the  telluride  minerals.  The  band  B  is  soft  "white  schist. 


j  iftoNPVKiTtL     ffify    SCHIST 

GOOD  HOPE  M/NE. 
FIG.  9. 

C  is  3  feet  wide  and  consists  of  massive  granular-crystal- 
line iron  pyrite  in  finely  shaded  bands  which  reproduce 
the  lamination  of  the  schist.  D  is  another  band  of 
bleached  schist.  E  is  similar  to  C,  but  not  so  solid.  The 
enclosing  country  also  carries  a  scattering  of  pyrite. 

In  the  upper  levels  there  is  evidence  concerning  the 
origin  of  the  vein  and  its  contents.     The  occurrence  of  a 


86  ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

body  of  native  sulphur  has  been  emphasized  practically,  by 
its  combustion  to  an  extent  that  endangered  the  mine. 
The  adjoining  ground  in  the  Chimney  and  Vulcan  claims 
was  abandoned  on  account  of  the  burning  of  a  similar  body 
of  sulphur.  In  the  Good  Hope  there  is  a  body  of  it  105 
ft.  deep,  4  to  6  ft.  wide,  and  of  a  length  which  the  owners 
thought  it  unwise  to  determine  by  further  drifting.  The 
top  of  the  sulphur  very  nearly  coincided  with  the  first  level, 
90  ft.  from  the  surface.  This  substance,  occurring  as  a 
grayish-yellow  loosely  coherent  powder,  was  shipped  in  car- 
load lots  to  the  Western  Chemical  Company,  at  Denver. 
It  averaged  80  per  cent  sulphur  and  also  3  to  20  dwt.  of 
gold  per  ton.  The  water  of  the  mines  on  this  vein  is  very 
acid  and  green  in  color.  It  carries  over  1  per  cent  copper 
and  1.5  per  cent  of  sulphuric  and  sulphurous  acids. 

On  inquiry  I  was  given  the  analysis  of  the  water  from 
the  shaft  on  August  15,  1901 : 

Per  Cent. 

Sodium    chloride 1.82 

Sodium  sulphate 3.39 

Calcium    sulphate 4.35 

Calcium   carbonate 4.61 

Magnesium    carbonate 6.52 

Silica   0.23 

Organic  and  volatile  matter 3.67 

The  water  contained  no  free  H2S04,  or  at  most  a  trace ; 
there  was  only  a  trace  of  copper.  It  is  the  opinion  of  Dr. 
Weiss  that  the  sulphuric  acid  and  copper  now  found  in  the 
mine  water  come  from  the  adjoining  Vulcan  ground  and 
are  traceable  to  the  effects  of  the  burning  of  the  native  sul- 
phur, which  lasted  for  two  weeks  in  the  neighboring  Vulcan 
and  Mammoth-Chimney  workings.  There  was  no  acid  nor 
copper  in  the  water  from  the  Good  Hope  shaft  until  after 
the  fire,  and  it  is  probable  that  surface  waters  have  since 
then  percolated  through  the  Vulcan  workings  and  thence 
downward  to  the  fifth  level  of  the  Good  Hope,  which  is 
100  ft.  deeper  than  the  Vulcan  shaft.  lApart  from  this 
fact,  it  is  worth  noting  that  the  copper  in  the  Good  Hope 
ore  is  increasing  in  amount  with  depth,  specimens  of  the 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAK   MOUNTAINS.  87 

native  metal  having  been  found  in  the  quartz  from  the 
lowest  level.     . 

At  the  first  level  there  is  evidence  that  the  vein  was 
shattered  and  that  a  certain  part  of  it,  at  least,  served  as 
the  vent  for  a  thermal  spring  of  comparatively  recent  date. 
Figs.  10  and  11  were  taken,  the  first  within  100  ft.  of  the 
shaft  and  the  other  further  eastward.  They  exhibit  the 
shattering  of  a  vein  of  opalescent  quartz  and  the  filling  of 
the  vein-fracture  with  geyserite,  for  a  width  of  4  to  5  ft 


mm  > 

;/ 


[//,)  sea/c/TE  [£Oj0p/ue5ce<vraw*Tz  J 

FIG.    10. 

The  substance,  which  is  here  termed  "geyserite,"  has  a 
specify  gravity  of  1.96  to  2.  It  is  porous,  with  scattered 
bits  of  opal  within  a  mass  of  grayish-white  crumbly  hard 
non-crystalline  silica.  On  comparing  it  with  a  piece  of 
geyserite  from  the  Yellowstone,  the  identity  was  apparent. 
The  banded  opalescent  quartz,  so  abundant  in  the  upper 
part  of  the  vein,  has  all  the  characteristics  of  such  a  sub- 
stance when  deposited  from  thermal  springs,  and  it  occurs 
in  the  Good  Hope  vein  in  various  stages  of  hardness  and 


88  ACROSS   THE   SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

texture.  Fire-opal  is  to  be  seen  in  occasional  brilliant 
specks,  and  all  sorts  of  dark  jasperoid  quartz  are  found, 
beautifully  banded. 

The  gradation  from  geyserite  to  white  sericite  schist 
indicates  that  the  latter  contributed  toward  the  material 
now  occupying  the  vein-fracture,  and  the  occurrence  amid 
the  silicious  sinter  of  occasional  dabs  of  a  very  smooth 
unctuous  white  powder  suggests  remnants  of  the  mica 
which  characterizes  the  inclosing  country. 


FIG.    IT. 


These  facts  point  irresistibly  to  the  activity  of  thermal 
waters,  that  is,  waters  having  a  temperature  higher  than 
the  mean  annual  temperature  at  the  surface.  Geyser  action 
has,  so  Dr.  Weiss  tells  me,  been  quoted  in  this  connection 
by  other  visitors  to  the  mine,  but  a  geyser  is  a  thermal 
spring  which  gushes32  out  at  the  surface,  and  in  this  case 
we  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  such  action  occurred. 

"Geyser  is  an  Icelandic  word,  meaning  literally  "a  gusher." 


IN    HIGH   ALTITUDES. 


90  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

Geysers  are  apt  to  be  the  last  resort  of  a  perplexed  geolo- 
gist. The  supposition  of  thermal  activity  is  based  on  the 
occurrence,  in  the  vein,  of  substances  which  are  actually 
deposited  from  the  hot  springs  in  the  Yellowstone  and 
other  places. 

In  connection  with  this  occurrence  it  is  well  to  refer  to 
the  evidence  of  vein  formation  at  hot  springs  which  Mr. 
Walter  H.  Weed  observed  at  Boulder,  in  Montana.33  At 
that  hydropathic  establishment  there  are  two  groups  of  hot 
springs,  issuing  from  fractures  in  the  granite  and  having 
a  temperature  ranging  from  120°  to  164°.  These  waters 
do  not  form  a  surface  deposit  of  sinter,  but  the  fissures 
from  which  they  issue  are  found  to  contain  a  mineral  de- 
posit. Many  of  the  fissures  have  been  sealed  up  with  this 
deposit  so  as  to  form  veins,  the  outcrops  of  which  enable 
one  to  trace  their  course  across  the  country.  The  vein- 
filling  consists  of  a  white  or  dark-gray  material  which  is 
mainly  a  mixture  of  chalcedony  and  stilbite,  but  also  con- 
tains patches  and  bands  of  jasper,  as  well  as  included  frag- 
ments of  the  granitic  country.  The  illustrations  given 
by  Weed  resemble  the  structure  to  be  seen  in  the  first  level 
of  the  Good  Hope  mine.  Opaline  silica,  in  bands  and  curly 
layers,  is  seen  throughout  the  mass.  When  freshly  frac- 
tured it  is  usually  dark-gray  and  very  hard.34  The  sur- 
rounding surface  shows  scattered  fragments  of  jasper,  chal- 
cedony and  other  substances  evidently  derived  from  these 
deposits.  On  analysis  they  were  found  to  contain  an  ap- 
preciable amount  of  gold,  as  much  as  0.05  oz.,  and  silver, 
as  much  as  0.4  oz.,35  so  that  the  connection  between  ore 
formation  and  thermal  activity  is  manifest.  It  is  interest- 
ing to  note  that  the  author  does  not  impute  the  source  of 
the  heat  to  "unknown  depths,"  but  to  meteoric  origin  as 
"a  part  of  the  normal  underground  circulating  water  of 


33  "Mineral    Vein    Formation    at    Boulder    Hot    Springs,    Mon- 
tana," by  Walter  Harvey  Weed,  United  States  Geological  Sur- 
vey, 1900. 

34  Op.  tit.,  p.  241. 
85  Op.  tit.,  p.  248. 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.  91 

the  region,  heated  by  physical  conditions  giving  it  access  to 
the  still  hot  rocks  underneath."36 

It  would  seem37  that  the  Good  Hope  vein  existed  as  a 
pyritic  band  in  the  schist,  formed  by  the  action  of  feebly 
active  underground  waters  such  as,  with  extreme  patience 
and  slowness,  are  supposed  to  form  similar  lodes.  ILong 
duration  of  time  for  action  and  immense  volume  of  solu- 
tion compensate  for  feeble  chemical  activity  and  extreme 
dilution.  The  formation  of  the  fracture  occupied  by  the 
vein  and  the  circulation  of  underground  waters  which 
supervened  may  both  have  come  in  the  wake  of  dying  vol- 
canic energies  such  as  were  manifested  in  the  adjoining 
region  of  the  San  Juan  mountains. 

At  a  later  date,  after  the  Good  Hope  vein  had  been 
formed,  it  became  the  line  for  a  repetition  of  fracturing 
along  which  more  intense  thermal  activity  had  play.  A 
part  of  the  vein  served  as  a  vent  for  a  hot  spring.  This 
shattered  the  pre-existing  vein  and  led  to  the  decomposi- 
tion of  the  pyrite,  with  the  elimination  of  sulphuric  acid, 
the  formation  of  an  iron  sinter  and  the  accumulation  of  a 
large  mass  of  native  sulphur.  It  is  also  probable  that 
the  liberation  of  iron  salts,  such  as  the  proto-sulphate, 
afforded  solvents  for  the  gold  which  was  re-deposited  in 
the  lower  parts  of  the  vein  so  as  to  make  valuable  ore. 

The  Good  Hope  vein  is  rich  in  uncommon  minerals. 
Tellurium  occurs  native,  as  a  tin-white  mineral  with  a 
metallic  luster.  Occasional  specimens  exhibit  rhombohe- 
dral  prisms.  It  is  associated  with  petzite,  the  telluride  of 
gold  and  silver,  and  a  new  mineral,  the  telluride  of  cop- 
per. A  greenish-brown  micaceous  substance  suggests  ros- 
coelite,  a  vanadium  mica,  which  occurs  in  association  with 
telluride  gold  ores  in  Boulder  county  and  at  Cripple  Creek, 
Colorado,  as  well  as  at  Kalgoorlie,  "Western  Australia. 

36  Op.  tit.,  p.  250. 

37  The  reader  is  reminded  .that  these  data  were  gathered  dur- 
ing a   visit  of  a  couple  of  hours  while  on   a   horseback   recon- 
naissance  across   the  country,   so   that   the  writer's   explanation 
of  the  origin  of  the  vein  is  only  a  suggestion,  prompted  by  the 
interesting  features  which  have  been  briefly  sketched. 


92  ACROSS    THE    SAX    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

One  specimen,  secured  on  the  occasion  of  our  visit  to  the 
mine,  contained  fine  needles  of  berthierite,  a  sulph-anti- 
monite  of  iron,  which  bears  some  resemblance  to  stibnite. 
The  opal  of  the  upper  levels  is  said  to  have  been  very  rich, 
especially  in  the  purple-tinted  spots;  this  may  have  been 
due  to  a  telluride  salt.  The  distribution  of  the  tellurides, 
together  with  the  native  element  itself,  is  another  sugges- 
tion of  the  instability  of  these  compounds  in  nature.  So 
far  as  is  known  they  are  not  characteristic  of  very  deep 
mining,  but  are  more  especially  distinctive  of  that  bonanza 
zone  of  gold  lodes  which  is  measurable  from  the  surface  and 
appears  to  be  connected  in  origin  with  the  conditions  ob- 
taining at  the  groundwater  level.  Of  course,  "depth"  is 
a  relative  term,  and  in  this  connection  refers  rather  to  the 
vertical  distance  from  the  lower  limit  of  oxidation. 

From  Vulcan  our  trail  took  us  over  the  eroded  stumps 
of  granite  hills  and  across  the  river  into  the  level  stretch 
over  which  the  town  of  Gunnison  spreads  itself  drearily 
and  wearily.  Gunnison  was  a  boom  town,  and  when  the 
wind  goes  out  of  a  boom  the  wreckage  is  not  enlivening. 
In  1880-1885  there  were  three  smelters  at  work,  and  the 
combination,  in  the  neighboring  mountains,  of  iron,  coal 
and  precious-metal  deposits  won  for  Gunnison  the  splendid 
title  of  a  "new  Pittsburgh'  The  toAvn  attempts  to  cover 
an  area  of  two  miles  square,  so  that  when  you  think  you  are 
in  Qunnison  you.  are  out  on  the  prairie,  and  when  you  im- 
agine you  are  out  in  the  country  you  are  on  a  main  street. 
In  spite  of  it  all,  Gunnison  wears  an  aspect  of  resignation, 
as  if  to  say  "it  is  better  to  have  boomed  and  bust,  than 
never  to  have  boomed  at  all." 

The  next  day,  September  14,  we  started  for  Crested 
Butte,  the  center  of  an  important  coal  region.  The  road 
follows  the  main  branch  of  the  Gunnison,  a  famous  trout- 
stream  known  to  every  follower  of  Izaak  Walton ;  the  valley 
broadens  at  times  into  a  goodly  expanse  of  farm-land, 
dotted  with  cheerful  homesteads.  A  few  miles  below 
Crested  Butte  the  river  is  flanked  by  mountains,  among 
which  the  rhyolite  cone  of  Eound  Mountain  and  the  basalt- 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  93 

capped  mass  of  Mt.  Wilkinson  are  conspicuous.  Finally 
the  traveler  reaches  the  confluence  of  several  streams  and  a 
wide  basin,  on  the  western  edge  of  which  the  town  of 
Crested  Butte  has  been  built.  A  noble  mountain,  but- 
tressed with  steep  cliffs  and  massive  as  an  anchorage  for  an 
aerial  tramway  to  Mars,  overlooks  the  town  from  the  east, 
and  has  given  it  the  name  of  Crested  Butte.  It  is  a  big 
stock  of  porphyrite.38  On  the  west  and  south  the  gentler 
slopes  of  Mt.  Wheatstone,  fringed  with  pines,  merge  with 
the  valley,  and  to  the  north  a  perspective  of  successive  peaks 
indicates  the  Ruby  range.  These  gain  height  and  mys- 
tery as  seen  through  the  smoke  from  the  coke-ovens  of 
Crested  Butte,  lying  huddled  under  the  long  shadows  of 
evening.  In  the  center  of  the  town  we  found  a  barrack- 
looking  building,  which  turned  out  to  be  a  very  clean  and 
comfortable  hostelry.  Next  day,  the  15th,  saw  us  on  the 
Coal  Creek  road,  en  route  to  Irwin  and  Floresta.  On  both 
sides  of  the  canon  the  hillslopes  were  a  desolation  of  burnt 
timber,  a  glimpse  of  that  destruction,  through  careless  fires, 
which  is  gradually  causing  the  deforestation  of  Colorado. 
The  actual  burning  up  of  good  trees  is  bad  enough,  but  the 
effect  of  such  fires  on  the  young  growth  does  the  most  seri- 
ous injury  to  the  possibilities  of  a  future  supply  of  timber 
from  these  devastated  tracts  of  mountain-land. 

As  the  higher  altitude  was  gained,  the  scenery  im- 
proved and  became  bolder.  We  were  passing  through  a 
porphyrite  country,  and  the  large  fragments  which  had 
rolled  to  the  roadside  showed  handsome  crystals  of  feldspar. 
A  winding  trail  took  us  northward  from  the  westbound 
road  and  brought  us  to  the  deserted  hamlet  of  Irwin.  The 
Irwin  mining  district  was  active  in  1880  and  succeeding 
years.  The  Forest  Queen  mine  is  credited  with  a  produc- 
tion of  over  a  million  dollars.  In  1893  the  fall  in  the  price 
of  silver  flattened  out  the  life  of  the  camp,  and  until  lately 
it  has  remained  practically  deserted.  Quite  recently  a  con- 
solidation of  a  group  of  mines  has  been  effected,  and  there 


88  Crested    Butte    Folio.     U.    S.    Geological    Survey.     "Igneous 
Rocks,"  by  Whitman  Cross. 


9-i 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 


is  now  promise  of  some  activity.     We  visited  the  Ruby 
Chief  mine,  under  the  kind  guidance  of  Mr.  P.  F.  Eopell. 

The  Ruby  Chief  vein  traverses  a  bedded  series  of  coarse 
sandstones  and  shales  belonging  to  the  Ruby  formation  of 
the  Upper  Cretaceous.  The  vein  occupies  a  fault-fracture, 
as  was  indicated  by  a  break  in  the  continuity  of  a  layer  of 
shale  seen  underground.  The  strike  is  northeast-southwest, 


r*.*. 


KING  MINE. 
FIG.    12. 

while  the  dip,  northwestward,  departs  only  slightly  from 
the  vertical.  The  accompanying  sketch,  Fig.  12,  gives  a 
typical  section  of  the  lode.  In  the  footwall  there  is  a  band 
of  shale.  From  A  to  B  is  a  laminated  casing  of  sandstone 
streaked  with  veinlets  of  quartz,  which  exhibit  comb  struc- 
ture. BC  is  a  6  to  8-in.  vein  of  white  quartz,  streaked 
with  arsenical  pyrite,  mispickel.  This  is  the  best  ore. 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  95 

It  usually  carries  ruby  silver  (proustite)  and  brittle  silver 
(stephanite).  Selected  ore  contains  65  to  100  oz.  silver, 
and  from  10  dwt.  to  1  oz.  of  gold,  per  ton.  This  vein  or 
'leader,'  B  C,  is  usually  characterized  by  a  definite  streak 
of  pyrite,  accompanied  by  zinc-blende,  which  speckles  the 
quartz  in  lines  parallel  to  the  walls  of  the  vein.  C  to  D  is 
mottled,  obscurely  brecciated  country,  with  quartz  sur- 
rounding the  fragments  of  sandstone,  and  impregnated 
with  arsenical  pyrite.  D  to  E  is  an  outer  band  of  obviously 
brecciated  sandstone  containing  very  little  evidence  of  min- 
eralization. The  crystalline  quartz,  lining  cavities  or 
Vugs/  is  a  very  marked  feature  of  the  lode,  more  especial- 
ly because  this  structure  is  so  noticeable  in  the  independent 
quartz-veins  which  occur  in  the  outer  country  alongside  of 
the  vein.  The  quartz  incrusting  the  brecciated  sandstone 
within  the  lode,  appears  banded,  due  to  the  contrast  be- 
tween layers  of  quartz  and  mispickel.  Rhodochrosite  was 
seen  in  a  few  specimens.  Mr.  Ropell  informed  me  that  the 
best  ore  had  been  obtained  from  the  vein  at  the  horizon 
where  it  traversed  the  conglomerate  beds  which  form  an 
integral  portion  of  the  Ruby  formation.  To  these  notes 
may  be  added  the  fact  that  porphyrite  occurs  in  the 
vicinity.  Mr.  Emmons  states  that  the  porphyrite  is  found 
apparently  as  an  intrusive  sheet  following  the  bedding  of 
these  sedimentary  rocks,  although  the  compound  fractur- 
ing associated  with  the  vein-structure  "often  gives  it  the 
appearance  of  a  dike  within  the  mineralized  zone."39 

Leaving  Irwin,  we  retraced  our  steps  for  a  mile  and 
crossed  the  shoulder  of  Ohio  peak  at  Kebler  pass,  named 
after  the  president  of  the  Colorado  Fuel  &  Iron  Company. 
The  winding  road  was  followed  through  a  pine  forest  until, 
on  the  northwestern  slope  of  the  ridge,  it  descended  ab- 
ruptly into  a  narrow  ravine.  To  ride  over  a  deserted 
mountain  road  and  then  to  come  suddenly  into  full  view 
of  a  compact  little  mining  settlement  is  a  sensation  which 
does  much  to  break  the  monotony  of  cross-country  riding. 

89  Anthracite-Crested  Butte  Folio.  United  States  Geological 
Survey.  "Description  of  the  Elk  Mountains,"  by  S.  F.  Emmons. 


96  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

This  was  Floresta,  boasting  the  only  anthracite  mine  west 
of  Pennsylvania.  The  old  anthracite  mine,,  known  as 
Smith's,  near  Crested  Butte,  is  now  worked  out,  and  the 
new  anthracite  region,  tributary  to  Paonia,  now  being  pros- 
pected between  the  Gunnison  river  and  the  Anthracite 
range,  is  yet  in  an  immature  stage  of  development. 

A  note  on  the  Smith  anthracite  mine  will  be  proper  here. 
It  was  located  21  years  ago,  and  opened  up  in  1882  by 
George  Holt,  now  of  Chicago,  Howard  F.  Smith,  now  of 
Elkhart,  Ind.,  and  Dr.  William  A.  Bell,  of  Colorado 
Springs,  Colo.  They  erected  a  breaker,  installed  the  requi- 
site machinery  and  operated  it  for  several  years,  until 
it  was  acquired  by  the  White  Breast  Fuel  Company,  in 
which  Messrs.  J.  A.  and  J.  T.  Kebler  were  interested. 
Shortly  afterward  it  was  acquired  by  the  Colorado  Fuel  & 
Iron  Company,  which  has  since  held  and  steadily  worked 
the  mine  until  April  of  this  year,  when  it  was  abandoned 
as  worked  out. 

The  vein  averaged  from  three  to  four  feet  in  thickness, 
and  the  coal  was  of  excellent  quality.  An  approximate 
production  of  5,000  tons  a  month  was  maintained.  A  spur 
of  the  Denver  &  Eio  Grande  Railroad  from  Crested  Butte 
connected  with  the  breaker.  The  incline  from  the  mine  to 
the  breaker  is  1,800  ft.  in  length,  with  a  pitch  of  45°,  and 
is  the  longest  and  steepest  in  the  State.  The  gravity  sys- 
tem was  emplo}red. 

The  coal  seam  at  Floresta  is  three  feet  thick,  and  dips 
north  at  an  angle  of  about  20°.  It  lies  with  the  hillslope, 
the  ravine  having  cut  into  the  seam  so  as  to  give  a  line  of 
outcrop  on  both  sides.  The  agency  which  was  chiefly  in- 
strumental in  the  development  of  anthracite  from  bitumi- 
nous coal  is  indicated  by  the  porphyrite,  which  appears  in 
the  form  of  dikes  in  the  railroad  cutting  and  is  clearly 
to  be  seen  capping  the  hillside.  The  coal  now  being  ex- 
ploited occurs  at  a  geological  horizon  which  is  115  ft.  above 
the  base  of  the  Laramie  formation,  belonging  to  the  Creta- 
ceous. There  is  also  another,  poorer  seam,  one  hundred  feet 
higher.  These  coal-measures  are  covered  by  a  sheet  of 


MAP  OF  COLORADO  ANTHRACIT|REGION,  AFTER  U.  S. 


98  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

porphyrite  which  extends  for  more  than  a  mile  along  the 
north  slope  of  the  Anthracite  range,  the  name  of  the  much 
serrated  ridge  behind  the  mine.  The  metamorphic  effect 
of  the  porphyrite  on  the  coal  is  readily  apparent ;  where 
the  metamorphism  of  the  sedimentaries  is  least,  non-coking 
bituminous  coals  are  found;  where  the  metamorphism  has 
been  present,  but  not  severe,  the  coking  coals  occur  and  in 
regions  of  intense  local  metamorphism  the  coal  has  been 
changed  to  anthracite.  It  has  also  been  observed40  that  a 
dike  cutting  across  a  coal  seam  affects"  its  chemical  and 
physical  composition  for  a  short  distance  only,  but  an  in- 
trusive sheet  will  affect  it  for  a  greater  distance  and  over  an 
area  commensurate  with  the  extent  of  the  eruptive  itself. 

The  output  of  the  mine  at  the  time  of  our  visit  was  100 
to  125  tons  per  day.  The  manager,  Mr.  Thos.  McLaughlin, 
to  whom  we  were  indebted  for  many  courtesies,  informed  me 
that  there  is  much  difficulty  in  keeping  miners  at  Floresta, 
because  the  mine  is  not  in  operation,  on  account  of  snow, 
for  more  than  half  the  year,  which  prevents  men  with 
families  from  going  there.  Moreover,  the  narrowness  of 
the  seam  and  the  conditions  of  working  are  such  that  only 
the  most  experienced  miners  can  earn  a  good  living.  The 
work  is  much  more  arduous  than  that  of  ordinary  lode  min- 
ing, because  of  the  cramped  space  and  the  subsequent  dis- 
posal of  the  output.  Owing  to  the  slight  dip  of  the  seam, 
it  is  difficult  to  handle  the  coal  underground;  the  chutes 
which  carry  the  product  of  the  face  to  the  entry  are  made 
of  No.  16  steel  sheets,  3  ft.  wide,  laid  on  the  footwall,  and 
nailed  onto  sides  made  of  2  by  6-inch  scantling.  When  in 
constant  use  the  angle  of  inclination  is  sufficient  to  keep 
the  chute  clear,  but  if  the  steel  lining  becomes  at  all  rusty, 
the  slope  proves  inadequate  for  the  automatic  descent  of 
the  coal,  and  the  miner  jumps  into  the  chute  and  toboggans 
down  the  incline,  pushing  the  coal  before  him  with  his  feet. 
The  men  get  90c.  for  2,600  lb.,  of  which  it  is  estimated 
that  2,000  lb.  is  clean  coal,  the  balance  going  over  the  culm 


40  George  H.  Eldridge,  Anthracite-Crested  Butte  Folio.     United 
States  Geological  Survey. 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  99 

heap.  Wages,  as  I  got  them  from  a  scrutiny  of  the  pay- 
rolls, averaged  $4.25  per  day,  with  about  30  men  at  work. 
The  men  are  largely  Austrians ;  scarcely  one-half  of  the 
workmen  are  English-speaking. 

In  the  mine  we  found  that  pillars  to  support  the  roof 
were  left  15  ft.  wide,  while  the  rooms  or  stopes  were  25  ft. 
The  drilling  is  done  with  machine  augers,  the  hole  being 
begun  with  a  2|-inch  bit,  and  finished  with  a  1-J-inch. 
Holes  are  made  from  4  to  6  ft.  deep.  Coarse  black  powder 
is  used ;  it  costs  the  miners  $3  per  keg  of  25  pounds.  The 
product  of  the  mine  is  sent  to  the  breaker,  which  has  a 
capacity  of  600  tons  per  day.  Five  sizes  are  made.  The 
coal  from  the  tipple  goes  over  two  sets  of  screen-bars,  the 
fines  going  direct  to  the  picking  tables  and  the  lump  to  the 
breaking  rolls.  These  are  toothed  rolls  of  the  usual  type. 
Then  follow  revolving  screens.  The  culm  is  handpicked 
as  it  runs  down  the  chutes.  These  chutes  for  slate-picking 
are  double.  Each  picker  (boys  and  old  or  crippled  miners) 
draws  past  him  just  as  much  coal  as  he  can  thoroughly 
clean,  so  that  the  coal  is  handled  once  only. 

The  upper  landing  is  10,175  ft.  above  sea  level.  This 
makes  Floresta  the  highest  coal  mine  in  the  United  States, 
if  not,  indeed,  the  highest  in  operation  anywhere.  An 
average  analysis  of  the  anthracite  shows : 

Per  Cent. 

Fixed   carbon 87.51 

Volatile    combustible ' 7.62 

Moisture     0.72 

Ash    4.15 

The  roof  of  the  seam  is  a  30--ft.  bed  of  sandstone,  the 
floor  is  in  shale.  Along  the  railroad  grade  there  are  af- 
forded several  good  sections  of  the  sedimentary  rocks,  in- 
closing the  coal,  where  they  are  intruded  by  porphyrite. 
A  typical  section  (Fig.  13),  exhibits  a  dike,  evi- 
dently a  porphyrite  containing  large  distinct  crystals  of 
feldspar.  The  bed  of  shale  traversed  by  the  dike  is,  near 
the  porphyrite,  hardened,  and  otherwise  altered  into  a  dark, 
massive  rock.  Fragments  of  shale  are  included  within  the 
dike.  The  joints  in  the  sedimentaries  cross  the  dike  clearly, 


100 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 


and  are,  therefore,  later  than  the  intrusion  of  the  latter. 
There  is  no  distinct  parting  or  wall  between  the  sedimen- 
taries  and  the  eruptive. 

On  the  railroad  grade,  and  about  a  mile  from  Floresta 
itself,  a  promontory  of  rock  gives  a  magnificent  view  of  the 
Anthracite  and  Ruby  ranges.  To  the  left  are  dark  pine 
woods  sloping  from  Ohio  peak  with  an  inclination  which 
reproduces  the  dip  of  the  porphyrite  flow  and  the  coal  beds 
underneath;  in  the  middle  distance,  and  contrasting  with 


'~£ZZ:te^\  +    +    +  +  *    *V_liy> 

wii^Mi 


the  dark  array  of  pines,  are  brilliantly  tinted  foothills  whose 
rounded  contour  indicate  the  softer  sandstones  of  the  Cre- 
taceous. Above  these  rises  the  abrupt  mass  of  Mt.  Beck- 
with,  built  of  porphyrite.  To  the  right,  and  coming  down 
to  meet  the  other  half  of  the  picture,,  is  the  red  Ruby  range 
with  its  serrated  comb  of  dikes,  which  can  be  seen  extending 
in  jagged  line  down  to  the  valley  itself  through  which  a 
trout-stream  winds  in  and  out  until  it  is  hidden  by  the  pre- 


CRYSTAL   CANON,   COLORADO. 


102  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS. 

cipitous  face  of  Mt.  Marcellina,  a  dome-shaped  laccolith41 
of  porphyritic  diorite.  Far  off,  palpitating  amid  the  haze 
of  forest  fires,  are  ranks  of  distant  hills  athrob  with  that 
soft  enchantment  in  which  the  distance  fades  from  view. 

We  left  Floresta  the  next  morning,  September  16,  and 
crossed  the  Ohio  pass,  on  our  return  to  Gunnison,  by  a  route 
different  to  that  of  our  previous  journey,  which  had  now 
taken  us  around  a  group  of  three  mountain  peaks,  Mt. 
Wheatstone,  Mt.  Axtell  and  Mt.  Carbon,  'and  from  the 
watershed  of  the  Slate  river  to  that  of  Ohio  creek,  both 
tributaries  of  the  Gunnison,  into  which  they  merge  a  little 
to  the  north  of  the  town  itself.  Ohio  pass,  10,033  ft.  above 
sea  level,  is  similar  to  other  mountain  crossings ;  there  is  a 
defunct  sawmill  with  an  untidy  sawdust  heap ;  an  aban- 
doned railroad  grade,  as  though  engineering  skill  had  failed 
of  breath;  a  scattering  of  pines,  the  straggling  procession 
which  is  all  that  is  left  of  the  serried  ranks  that  came  up 
the  mountain  side  in  proud  array  until  they  encountered 
an  invisible  bar  to  further  advance — that  "timber  line" 
which,  like  the  shore  of  an  ancient  sea,  belts  all  the  moun- 
tains and  marks  the  upward  limit  of  the  conditions  favor- 
able to  forest  growth. 

We  passed  Carbon  and  Castleton,  two  coal  camps,  with 
all  the  hideousness  which  belongs  to  those  unhappy-looking 
settlements ;  then  a  short  stay,  pleasant  for  man  and  horse 
alike,  at  a  roadside  ranch,  prepared  us  for  a  long  canter  over 
the  wide,  dusty  road  which  finally,  but  we  could  never  tell 
when,  brought  us  into  the  unlimited  city  of  Gunnison. 

That  night  at  Gunnison  we  heard  the  fishermen's  tales. 
It  is  a  great  resort  for  the  manipulators  of  rod  and  line. 
It  is  also  a  mining  center  for  the  surrounding  hill  country, 
so  that  there  is  no  lack  of  fishy  yarns.  The  unwary  will 
hear  of  mountains  of  iron  and  acres  of  gold  ore;  but  be- 
hind the  exaggeration  there  is  the  fact  that  the  Gunnison 
country,  with  the  Elk  mountains  to  the  north  and  the 


41  A  laccolith^  is  a  body  of  intrusive  lava.  It  does  not  spread 
in  dikes  or  sheets,  but  gathers  into  a  mass  or  core,  which  lifts 
the  overlying  strata. 


1(M  ACEOSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

granitic  foothills  which  lead  to  the  San  Juan  ranges,  to  the 
south,  is  extremely  rich  in  a  variety  of  mineral  wealth — 
coal,  iron,  gold  and  silver — which  would  have  undergone 
more  substantial  exploitation  if  the  windy  breath  of  a  pre- 
mature boom  had  not  blighted  it  in  the  infancy  of  its  de- 
velopment. 

On  September  17  we  rode  from  Gunnison  to  Gate  View. 
The  road  follows  the  Gunnison  until  it  crosses  the  river  at 
lola,  the  shipping  point  of  the  Vulcan  district.  Taking 
a  cross-country  trail,  we  filed  through  the  sage-bush,  cover- 
ing monotonous,  low  hills,  the  remnants  of  granite  moun- 
tains which  had  yielded  to  the  leveling  hand  of  Time. 
Spencer  and  Dubois,  two  mining  camps,  wrere  found  almost 
deserted.  Then,  surmounting  a  ridge,  we  saw  again  the 
splendor  of  the  San  Juan  ranges  and  the  pleasant  valley  of 
the  Lake  Fork.  After  weary  miles  of  sage-brush  hillocks 
it  was  singularly  refreshing  to  look  upon  a  landscape 
through  the  diversified  beauty  of  which  the  modifying  in- 
fluence of  geological  structure  could  be  plainly  discerned. 
At  Gate  View  we  passed  a  night.  The  name  is  given  to  a 
ranch  and  railroad  section-house  near  the  natural  gateway 
of  the  Lake  Fork,  which  flows  through  a  gap  cut  into  the 
andesite.  A  tongue  of  this  eruptive  crosses  the  broad  val- 
ley ;  the  river  has  cut  its  way  through ;  high,  nearly  vertical 
cliffs  arise  on  either  side ;  then  steep  debris  slopes,  making 
a  broad  V,  at  the  bottom  of  which  the  road,  the  railroad 
and  the  river  jostle  each  other  for  passage;  this  frames  a 
view  of  hills  rich  in  the  gold  and  russet  of  the  aspen,  sur- 
mounted by  the  high  peaks  of  the  San  Juan  mountains. 

Looking  through  the  portals  of  the  river,  one  is  reminded 
of  Ruskin's  question,  concerning  a  similar  natural  struc- 
ture: "When  did  the  great  spirit  of  the  river  first  knock 
at  those  adamantine  gates?  When  did  the  porter  open  to 
it  and  cast  his  keys  away  forever,  lapped  in  whirling  sand  ?" 
It  is  a  fine  similitude ;  but  geology,  with  less  poetic  diction, 
says  that  the  rock  is  not  adamant  to  the  instrument  of  ero- 
sion as  used  by  the  running  stream  with  patient  persistence 
through  long  time,  and  that  no  porter  was  needed  to  open 


ACROSS   THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  105 

the  gate;  the  river  found  it  in  obeying  the  laws  of  its 
being — gravity — which  impelled  it  to  seek  the  lowest  chan- 
nel and  to  deepen  that  channel  continually,  for  fear  the 
onlooking  hills  should  fill  it  up 'too  fast  with  their  dis- 
carded debris. 

The  road,  further  on,  alternately  crosses  flat  stretches 
of  partially  cultivated  land  and  descends  into  the  bed  of 
the  stream  amid  narrow  gorges  cut  into  andesite-breccia 
and  tuffs,  until  at  the  confluence  of  Henson  creek  we  rode, 
amid  a  sharp  downpour  of  cold  rain,  into  the  town  of  Lake 
City. 

We  reached  Lake  City  at  noon  amid  a  rainstorm  which 
was  remarkable  for  the  reason  that  it  was  the  first  bit  of 
bad  weather  encountered  during  twelve  days.  It  cleared 
in  the  afternoon,  so,  leaving  our  horses  to  rest,  we  walked 
the  seven  miles  up  Henson  creek  to  the  Ute  and  Ulay 
mines.  These  have  been  the  mainstay  of  Lake  City 
through  all  the  vicissitudes  of  the  past  twenty  years.  The 
two  veins  have  been  worked  at  various  times  both  jointly 
and  separately.  When  I  was  last  there  the  Ulay  lode  was 
the  chief  source  of  production;  on  the  present  occasion 
we  found  that  the  Ute  vein  was  affording  the  principal 
stoping  ground.  This  was  above  the  main  adit.  The 
vein  is  from  four  to  five  feet  in  width ;  it  is  a  simple  quartz- 
vein  containing  argentiferous  galena.  Iron  pyrite  and 
zinc-blende  are  present  in  relatively  small  quantity.  The 
lode  is  essentially  an  impregnation  following  a  sheeted 
band  in  the  andesitic  breccia  of  the  San  Juan  formation 
and  has  the  characteristics  already  noted  at  the  Camp  Bird, 
Smuggler  Union  and  other  mines  in  the  same  region. 
Stopes  extend,  more  or  less  continuously,  for  half  a  mile. 
The  Ute  dips  westward  at  63°  and  is  worked  in  the  ad- 
jacent California  mine.  The  Ulay  had  been  worked  700 
ft.  below  Henson  creek  through  old  workings  which  were 
in  bad  repair;  a  new  vertical  shaft  had  just  been  started 
to  open  up  the  lower  ground  on  this  lode. 

The  mill  reminds  one,  in  its  method  of  treatment,  of 
the  old  Foxdale  mine,  in  the  Isle  of  Man,  where,  however, 


106 


ACROSS    THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 


raff-wheels  are  used  instead  of  elevators  and  the  plant  is 
spread  over  a  much  larger  area.     The  treatment  of  the 

Rock  Breaker 


Rolls 


Roils 


Rolls 


Settling  Tanks 
DIAGRAM  OF  TREATMENT  AT  THE   UTE   &   ULAY   MILL. 

Ute  &  Ulay  ores  is  simple  and  well  adapted.     The  mill 
has  a  capacity  of  90  to  100  tons  per  day.     The  ore  goes 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN   MOUNTAINS.    •  107 

first  to  a  rock-breaker  (Blake,  9  by  15)  and  then  to  three 
sets  of  rolls  (-Allis-Ghalmers,  16  by  30).,  then  through  four 
successive  trommels,  36  inches  in  diameter  and  7  ft.  long, 
which  size  the  crushed  ore  to  8,  6,  4  and  2J  millimeters. 
The  coarse,  which  passes  through  the  trommels,  goes  to  the 
jigs,  a  double-compartment  jig  for  each  trommel.  The 
fines,  which  escape  from  the  last  trommel,  pass  into  two 
hydraulic  sizers,  the  coarse  being  sent  to  jigs  while  the 
fines  go  into  a  third  sizer.  The  coarse  from  this  last  sizer 
goes  to  a  jig  and  the  fines  run  to  the  buddies.  There  are 


THE  HEXSON    CREEK   MILLS. 

two  plain  buddies,  16  ft.  in  diameter,  and  four  double- 
deck  buddies,  24  ft.  in  diameter,  the  tailings  from  which 
pass  into  settling  tanks  where  the  slime  is  arrested.  The 
treatment  is  illustrated  graphically  on  the  diagram  given 
herewith. 

The  concentrates  are  dried  and  mixed  by  passing  through 
a  heated  revolving  cylinder.  About  1^  per  cent  of  moist- 
ure is  left  in  the  concentrates  in  order  to  lessen  the  leak- 
age arising  from  the  bad  flooring  of  the  railroad  cars, 
which  would  be  a  greater  source  of  loss  if  the  concentrates 
were  dry  enough  to  run  readily.  The  concentrates  con- 


ACROSS    THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  109 

tain  58  to  61  per  cent  lead,  13  to  15  oz.  silver  and  0.05 
to  0.06  oz.  of  gold  per  ton.  They  represent  about  16  per 
cent  in  weight  of  the  original  ore  and  an  extraction  of 
about  80  per  cent  of  the  lead  and  65  per  cent  of  the  silver. 
Next  day,  September  18>  saw  us  started  on  our  final 
stage,  from  Lake  City  to  Ouray.  Our  way  took  us  again 
past  the  Ute  &  Ulay,  where  we  stopped  to  get  some  further 
data  from  the  millman.  As  we  rode  along  up  Henson 
creek  it  was  pleasant  to  notice  a  good  deal  of  mining 
activity;  we  passed  under  the  Bleichert  tramway  of 
the  Hidden  Treasure,  past  the  Moro  mill,  with  a  Leschen 
tram  connecting  it  to  an  unseen  mine  on  the  pine-clad 
mountain-side  and  then,  just  below  Rose's  Cabin,  the  Bo- 
nanza tunnel,  with  a  new  mill  in  course  of  construction. 
Mr.  Philip  Newitt,  superintendent  of  the  Henson  Creek 
Lead  Mines  Company,  as  it  is  officially  styled,  was  kind 
enough  to  take  us  underground.  The  lode  is  the  usual 
sheeted  band  of  breccia-country  carrying  four  to  five  feet 
of  quartz,  in  which  gold,  silver,  copper  and  lead  are  carried 
by  copper  pyrite,  galena  and  other  less  conspicuous  min- 
erals. The  mine  afforded  an  example  of  the  use  of  electric 
drills;  the  Gardner  and  Durkee  were  both  in  use  and  the 
superintendent  expressed  himself  as  disappointed  with 
them;  in  each  case  the  motor  is  carried  on  a  truck  and 
power  is  transmitted  through  a  flexible  shaft.  The  prac- 
tical efficiency  of  the  electric  drills  is  a  subject  too  large 
for  a  passing  comment,  but  it  is  fair  to  the  inventors  to 
say  that  the  machines  suffer  from  their  unpopularity  among 
miners  and  the  frequent  lack  of  technical  skill  on  the  part 
of  the  operator.  As  a  rule  the  first  drill  tested  in  a  mine 
is  handled  by  an  expert  provided  by  the  company  which 
sells  the  drill ;  then,  results  being  deemed  good  by  a  man- 
ager or  director,  others  are  ordered.  The  drill  company's 
man  and  his  skilled  assistants  depart,  leaving  a  delicate 
piece  of  electrical  machinery  to  the  tender  mercies  of  a 
muscular  workman  who  starts  with  a  prejudice  against 
anything  new  and  unfamiliar,  and  is  apt  to  be  confirmed 
in  his  prejudice  by  his  own  inexpert  handling  of  the  ma- 


110  ACROSS    THE    SAN    JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

chine.  This,  of  course,,  is,  in  a  way,  the  drawback  to  all 
electrical  machinery — it  requires  workmen  who  know  some- 
thing about  it — but  this  is  an  obstacle  which  the  increasing 
application  of  electricity  will  overcome,  surely.  In  the 
meantime  I  unite  with  others  in  the  hope  that  the  electric 
drill  will  be  further  improved,  because  it  can  facilitate  and 
cheapen  mountain  mining  to  an  extraordinary  degree. 

The  new  mill,  in  course  of  erection,  will  be  operated  by 
electricity,  generated  at  the  power-plant,  three  miles  lower 
down  on  Henson  creek,  where  a  6-ft.  Hugg  wheel  does  the 
work.  The  mill  will  have  a  Blake  rock-breaker,  a  Sturte- 


ROSE'S  CABIN.     AN   OLD  STAGE   HOUSE. 

vant  crusher  and  three  pairs  of  rolls.  Then  will  come 
Bartlett  concentrating  tables  provided  by  the  Colorado  Iron 
Works  and  Standard  tables  supplied  by  Fairbanks,  Morse 
&  Co.,  the  latter  being  also  responsible  for  the  general  de- 
sign of  the  mill. 

This  pleasant  interlude  at  the  Bonanza  mine  was  sup- 
plemented by  a  hearty  dinner  at  the  miners'  boarding- 
house  before  we  mounted  again. 

Eose's  Cabin,  at  10,850  ft.,  just  above  the  Bonanza  mine- 
buildings,  is  a  landmark.  It  was  a  stopping  place  in  the 


THE   CANON   OF   THE   UNCOMPAHGRE. 


112  ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN"   MOUNTAINS. 

old  days  of  transmontane  travel  when  long  lines  of  pack 
mules  and  horsemen  were  wont  to  file  up  Henson  creek 
on  their  way  to  Silverton,  Rico  and  Ouray.  We  took  the 
right-hand  trail,  past  the  Palmetto  mill  and  along  the  old 
grade  to  the  Frank  Hough  mine. 

As  we  climbed  the  range  the  snow-mists  gathered,  and 
when  we  finally  reached  the  crest,  at  12,850  feet,  the  moun- 
tains were  robed  in  all  the  magnificence  of  the  storm.  The 
cold  blast  from  the  canon  below  swept  up  to  the  summit  of 
the  range,  driving  a  chilly  mist  which  flung  itself  fiercely 
around  every  crag  and  threw  great  shadows  that  stalked 
swiftly  across  the  darkening  slopes.  Here  and  there  amid 
the  gloom  a  lonely  peak  caught  the  light,  a  Titan  head 
above  the  sea  of  cloud.  Thus  we  saw  old  Uncompahgre 
and  the  Wetterhorn,  besides  many  another  unnamed  crest. 
While  we  waited,  the  hail  and  snow  came  fast,  and  so, 
without  further  delay,  we  began  the  slow  descent  of  the 
other  side,  leading  and  pulling  our  shivering  horses  down 
the  tedious  talus  slopes. 

Soon  we  reached  the  warmer  air  of  Bear  creek  basin,  a 
spacious  amphitheater  near  the  timber-line,  from  which  a 
well-marked  trail  took  us  into  Bear  creek  canon,  a  nar- 
row gorge,  lined  by  the  most  astounding  precipices  and  pic- 
turesque to  a  degree  which  was  astonishing  even  after  two 
weeks  of  mountain  scenery.  The  andesite-breccia,  in  nearly 
level  layers,  forms  cliffs  which  sweep  from  an  eery  height 
of  a  thousand  feet,  and  more,  down  into  the  hidden  bed 
of  a  torrent.  The  sheeted  structure,  due  to  parallelism 
of  nearly  vertical  fractures,  is  very  evident,  and  the  sym- 
pathetic structure  of  the  veins,  whose  croppings  are  clearly 
visible  ribbing  the  rock-faces  with  broken  lines  of  quartz, 
is  apparent  even  at  a  distance.  We  passed  the  Yellow 
Jacket  and  the  Grizzly  Bear  mines,  huddled  under  the 
beetling  brows  of  breccia  cliffs,  where,  here  and  there,  a 
cluster  of  courageous  pines  clung  hungrily  for  life,  or  a 
solitary  cabin  looked  calmly  over  the  abyss,  or  faint  trails 
in  unexpected  tracery  of  line  wound  in  and  out  of  dark 


ACROSS   THE    SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS. 

ravines  with  the  veritable  unconscious  air  of  gentlemen 
who  have  no  visible  means  of  support. 

Our  progress,  over  a  trail  which  was  a  narrow,  albeit 
quite  safe,  ledge  between  rock  and  torrent,  was  necessarily, 
with  horses,  a  slow  business.  At  length,  after  hours  of 
continuous  descent  which  seemed  interminable  and  gave 
one  a  singular  feeling  of  going  right  into  the  depths  of  the 
earth,  we  emerged  suddenly  into  full  view  of  the  Uncom- 
pahgre  valley.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  all  four 
of  us,  some  of  whom  had  done  our  voyage  round  the  world 
more  than  once,  were  amazed  at  the  grandeur  of  the  great 
picture  before  us.  -  Scattered  already  to  the  four  winds,  as 
becomes  mining  engineers,42  we  shall,  I  believe,  always  re- 
member that  "polychrome  of  splendor,  an  exultation  to  re- 
call." Raskin  would  have  rhapsodized  and  Clarence  King 
could  have  described  it.43 

The  storm  had  swept  northward,  the  sky  was  still  partly 
overcast  with  flying  cloud,  a  luminous  atmosphere,  pure  as 
inter-planetary  space,  filled  the  canon  depths,  and  from  the 
west  the  sunlight  pierced  the  lingering  mists  with  mellow 
light.  We  stood  on  a  narrow  promontory.  Across  the 
canon  terraced  slopes  descended  in  parklike  gradation,  re- 
splendent with  the  livery  of  autumn,  and  above  their  aspen 
gold  the  bastions  of  blue-gray  andesite  rose  tier  after  tier  in 
Gothic  severity  of  line  until  belted  with  the  rising  mists. 
Up  the  valley  to  the  left  the  winding  thread  of  the  river  led 
to  the  pyramid  of  Mt.  Abram,  his  sentinel  head  aglow 
with  sunlight,  while  further  south  rose  the  Red  Mountains, 
shrouded  in  cold  vapor  that  dimmed  their  volcanic  tints. 
Straight  in  front  and  northward,  overtopping  these  swiftly 
changing  visions  of  rich  coloring  and  sculptured  line,  there 
gleamed  the  Mt.  Sneffels  ranges,  freshly  ennobled  with  a 
coronet  of  snow,  with  a  great  passion  of  light  glowing 
about  their  lordly  summits,  while  in  the  darkening  east 

42  One  is  in  Western  Australia,  another  in  California,  the  third 
is  in  Mexico,  and  the  fourth  in  New  York  City. 

43  This  gives  me  the  opportunity  of  recommending  to  my  friends 
that  most  delightful  book  of  Clarence  King,  "Mountaineering  in 
the  Sierra  Nevada." 


ACROSS   THE   SAN   JUAN    MOUNTAINS.  115 

there  trailed  away  "a  gray-winged  form,  the  ghost  of  wind 
and  rain." 

It  will  seem  something  of  an  anti-climax  to  state  that  the 
trail  subsequently  led  us  to  an  interesting  geological  section, 
where  the  breccia  of  the  Eocene  period  was  found  resting 
upon  the  upturned  edges  of  pre-Cambrian  slates  and  quart- 
zite,  with  only  a  thin  layer  of  conglomerate,  possibly  a 
representative  of  the  San  Miguel  formation,  between  them. 
We  reached  Ouray  before  dark,  having  completed  a  ride 
of  fully  400  miles. 


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BEEKELEY 


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